Hellbound
by jones2000
Summary: AU. Sally Wandell was on the trail of the secret to making the Colt. Until someone bumped her off. But finding the last of the Colts is put on the backburner as Sam and Dean attempt to solve the mystery of Harry Turner's doppelganger.
1. Obsession

**AN – The original chapters were removed 'cause they didn't seem to fit right with the style of previous stories, and basically I just didn't like 'em that much. I think I tried to write without really knowing where the plot was going. Bad idea. But I've finally broken through the Writer's Block of Doom and got my groove back on track. Thank god.**

_Bela's seance is more or less the same, but has been edited in places to fit in with the story._

* * *

_Last time, on Supernatural: Cursed._

Seven years after all Hell broke loose, order has finally been restored. Sam is one the road back to sanity, Dean has managed to escape from Hell, Jo and Ellen have gone off hunting on their own, and Bobby has become responsible for the part-time training of new hunters.

Allies have been found, enemies have been made, and mysteries have been unearthed. Who is the Henry Colt that Captain Wandell is desperate to find? Who exactly is the other Winchester? Will the insane Succubus catch up to Dean?

* * *

Bela had done this several times before in her life. Setting up the séance. Contacting the dead. Asking them to help her find objects, people. Even occasionally asking them advice when she was really desperate. But, in all that time, she had never conducted a séance with more than one other person in the room.

Ah, well. There was a first time for everything.

Her apartment suddenly seemed painfully small as the others slowly trickled in through the door. Bela's poor cat yowled each time a new face entered, his fur standing completely on end. His owner wasn't much better, standing with her arms crossed and her mouth pressed into a thin line.

"Bela?"

"Oh, you're here." Bela said stiffly. "I was beginning to think all this was a little too pedestrian for you."

Sally Wandell smiled patiently. She was used to getting attitude from the other woman. If Bela didn't put up that front, the take-it-or-leave-it facade, she really didn't have anything else left beneath the surface. Yes, most of life was about faking it and how well you could do it.

"Why are you smiling? I don't like it when you smile. It means you're going to kill something."

"You know me so well." Sally threaded her arm through Bela's. "I'll introduce you to the others."

Bela let her guest reluctantly lead her further back into the apartment. "You never said you were bringing anyone else." She tried to rustle up as much indignation as she could, but somehow her callousness and rudeness had fallen flat on its face.

The other woman shrugged. "I never said I wouldn't, either." She said slyly. For a moment Bela seriously felt the urge to knock her to the ground and throttle her. "Come on. I hear you're the best. You aren't getting cold feet, are you? I'm sure that someone else could use the money, if you aren't interested…"

"You bitch." Bela growled out. Sally flashed her a toothy grin, completely unruffled. And then suddenly they were both sixteen again, young, beautiful, not a care in the world. It was unbelievably depressing how much they'd changed. "All right, you win." Bela conceded her defeat. "Let's do this thing."

"That's my girl." Sally gave a bright smile, the deep lines set in her face temporarily disappearing. But even with that merry expression on her face, there was still an almost menacing aura around her.

There were three people in the dining room when Sally and Bela walked back in. One Bela recognised straight away, a tall man with sunken cheeks and streaks of white through his black hair. The moniker he'd oddly been stuck with was 'Spots'. Out of the so many million in the world, Spots was a man Bela truly respected. Walking past, she gave him a wink and Spots shook his head, a smile playing about his mouth. There was a woman with bright red hair and a rather sour expression, and Bela had to look at the last person in the room twice, before clapping her hand to her mouth in shock.

"Adrian!" _Oh my God. _"You're supposed to be dead!" _The last she had heard was that Adrian Jones had gone up against a succubus and lost. Knobbed to death, for want of a better expression. _

"Hey, kid." He was cleanly shaven, which was strange, and had his coarse brown hair freshly combed, which was even stranger. Bela couldn't help herself from reaching out to pinch him to see if he was actually real.

"Ow. I'm not dead. Really." He said, a hurt expression on his face.

"Oh my God, you really aren't." Despite her abhorrence for open displays of affection, Bela threw her arms about his neck and gave him a swift hug. She sniffed. "You smell like purfume. Why aren't you dead?"

"I thought out of anyone, you'd be able to smell a set-up." Adrian smiled wryly.

"Maybe I'm just getting old." She replied. "I should have known you were capable of faking your own death. You were the best con I ever knew."

"I _am_." He corrected.

"If you say so," Bela dismissed. "Oh, I have to tell Palmer. The kid was all cut up and cringe-worthy at the thought of you being-"

"No." Red spoke up suddenly. "No one can know that Adrian is here. And no one can know that the rest of us are here."

"Oh, yeah?" Bela sneered, pissed off that someone had the balls to tell her what to do in her own place. Her cat curled around her ankles and spat and snarled at the woman who spoke.

Red looked down with distaste at the animal. "Two of a kind, you two." She said coldly. "Both hissing at whatever makes you feel uncomfortable. Kind of small and pathetic, really."

"Watch your mouth." Bela barked. "And just who the hell are you meant to be, Red?"

Red bristled but did not rise to the bait. Instead she took a breath, tossed back her dark auburn mane, held out her hand and answered in a civil tone. "Detective Elizabeth Montgomery. Please to meet you, Miss Talbot."

Bela dropped the woman's hand as if it was a poisonous plant. "You're a _cop_?" There was horror and loathing in her voice. Bela just absolutely _hated _the police. They always got in the way, blundering in, making a mess, and stopping your car along the highway _just _because you happened to have clawmarks through the driver's side door.

"No! Not a cop!" Adrian held his hands up in that expressive way he had when he really wanted to get the message across. "Are you kidding? We'd never bring a cop into something like this."

"I'm a private investigator." Red said into Bela's stunned expression. "Sort of like you. Only legal."

_Alright, that stung._ Just as she opened her mouth to reply, Adrian took hold of her shoulders and pushed her back. "Let me go so I can floor the bitch." She hissed.

"No. Hear me out first." Bela pulled away from him and folded her arms, waiting expectantly. Adrian pulled in a breath, and ruffled his neat hair. "It goes like this. You're the best in your stuff. I'm the best in mine. Spots is the pro in his. Same with Sally."

Bela threw the older man a sunny smile as he patiently waited for the younger people to finish their games. Sally had picked up Bela's cat, and the animal was now purring contentedly in her arms. Sally sighed and rolled her eyes good-naturedly.

Meanwhile, Adrian Jones was still talking. "-You're great, Bela, but there are still some things you miss. With Elizabeth on the team, we've got all our bases are covered and we're basically guaranteed to work."

Bela raised an eyebrow, and was about to ask him what the hell he was on about when it dawned on her.

"She's a damn _psychic detective_?"

"Could we _please_ just pretend to be civil and get a move on?" Sally sounded a trifle exasperated. Bela and Elizabeth glared at each other, silently declaring a truce. Stiffly Bela assumed her place at the head of the table.

"Make sure one finger is on the glass." She instructed.

Elizabeth Montgomery squeezed herself in between Adrian and Spots. "Shouldn't we all hold hands or something?"

"Whatever turns you on." Bela retorted, not taking her eyes from the board.

"You know you don't have to set up the atmosphere for us, right?"

"Shut up." Both Adrian and Sally snapped at the same time.

"We call on the spirits." Bela intoned. Someone coughed. Someone else sniggered. It was like a damn kiddie pyjama party. "We call on the spirit of Bill Harvelle."

Spots shot up straight, though he did not take his finger from the glass. Sally shot him a stern warning glare, but Bela did not notice, as engrossed as she was. Her body felt light, like she was there at the table, and yet somehow not. "We call on the sprit of Bill Harvelle."

"Are you with us, Bill?"

The glass began to grow hot underneath their fingers, but Bela did not notice as the glass slid over to _Yes _before beginning to spell out _LEAVE ME ALONE._

"Bill, we need to ask you some questions."

_No._

"This is very important." Adrian said.

_GO AWAY._

"We really need your help." Sally put in.

_AM DEAD. WANT TO REST. LEAVE ME ALONE._

Bela opened her eyes. To her it was as if everything had been covered with a light scattering of powder, and she saw the dark shape at the other end of the table, almost directly behind Spots. His face was obscured, but she could clearly make out the edges of his long coat and his ripped blue jeans, even though none of the others could.

No doubt, to the others it looked like she was completely spacing out.

"Where have you been?" Bela asked the figure.

_AWAY. HEAVEN, HELL. THE SAME._

"The same?"

_Yes._

_God, it almost sounds like he's in limbo. _"Do you know who I am?"

_Yes._

"Do you know why we're contacting you?"

_Yes._

"Why?"

_SECRETS AND LIES. THE STORM COMES._

"The storm?"

_EVERYBODY DIES._

"Bill, this is important. We need you to answer some questions."

_Yes. No. NO MORE QUESTIONS._

"Please?"

The glass was still. Everyone in the room instinctively looked to Bela. "Please. They're only questions. Please help us."

_No._

There was a moment where everybody in the room seemed to be almost holding their breaths, and then the glass shuddered underneath their fingers, forming the hunter Bill Harvelle's fragmented thoughts.

_ONE QUESTION._

Spots looked back down at the table, his face a jumble of emotions. Elizabeth Montgomery still looked sceptical, and Adrian and Sally exchanged looks. The dead hunter had passed an ultimatum: one question left on the table. Make sure it's the right one.

Whoever said you lost your self-awareness when you were dead hadn't known many hunters.

"Any question?"

_ONE._

"And you'll answer truthfully?"

For a moment the glass hovered between _Yes _and _No_ before finally settling on _Yes._

"Do you mean that?"

_Yes._

Bela looked up at Sally. One chance, make it good, and there was no guarantee that he would tell them the truth anyway. Yes, this was quite a bit different to holding séances for old ladies wanting to talk to their dead cats, or even contacting the dead to track down the article that killed them.

Because Bill Harvelle knew exactly _why_ they had called him back, and there was no way he was going to make it easy for them.

"Will you tell us," Sally began to speak. She paused and straightened out her words so there could be no confusion. "Tell us where we can find the last of the family Colt." There. A straightforward and haughty command.

_GONE FROM HERE._

That was too much for Sally, who snarled. "We _know _that, you old ghost. Where did they go?"

_ONE QUESTION. ANSWERED._

"You didn't answer properly!"

_ONE QUESTION. DEAL._

"You did promise."

The glass stopped quaking, and for a moment she thought he must have left. But then the glass began spelling out one last word, moving so fast that she almost didn't catch it. _Journal. _"Who's journal?" Bela asked.

_THE OTHER ONE._

* * *

Ellen was cleaning.

It happened every year at around this time, there was less and less to clean up. No Bill to leave his socks in the most unusual places. No Jo to track mud in on all the floors, and no Ash to dump all his computer stuff all over the counter. Even her regulars weren't showing no more, the ranks were thinned every year. Seventeen to seventy, it made no difference. It's like her own daddy used to say, _we're all born dyin', just some of us don't know when to lie down._

Her old man. Lived long enough to see little Jo come into the world, survived his third wife by fifteen years, faced horrors of hell that his little girl couldn't imagine, and was finally taken down by, ironically, the damn measles.

Battling to get into the storeroom among the precariously stacked boxes and the haphazardly ordered bottles, Ellen swore and damned her new kitchen hand to hell. Sure, the kid was a pretty good hunter and he used to cook for one of the ritzy places downtown which meant his stuff was actually edible, but his organizational skills had gone to _crap_.

"Ow!"

She had just tripped over a large wooden crate that had been pushed up behind the door. As she glared ruefully down at it, she noticed something in the lid. The smallest thing anyone else would have ignored. She ran her thumb over the stratches in the wood.

BH4EJ.

The box was hers. It had gone with her when she had hauled ass into the new place, only 'cause she'd shoved it to the back of the safe when Bill died and forgot about it until the Roadhouse turned crispy.

A box of memories, she used to tell Jo when the kid was small.

Jo's first knife, a Swiss Army one a friend got her when she turned five. A squashed up finger-painting from her first day of school. Bill's black leather gloves that Ellen had tried to steal the first time they met in their early twenties, still kids 'emselves. Photos of her dad. Candid shots of his brothers. A card that was passed around the Roadhouse when her and Bill got engaged. The journal she could never seem to bring herself to open.

Looking at the last snap of her, Bill, and a very little Jo standing around the Roadhouse smiling, it suddenly hit her. A profound insight so shocking, it was almost like a bolt of lightning.

She was sitting with a box of memories in front of her, a box of memories she had kept close for so long that she had subconsciously refused to live beyond these shining fragments. She had become obsessed with keeping things as they had been, before…

Just before.

"My god." She said aloud, and slowly pushed to box aside. Stiffly, she stood, deciding that she would keep it as it was, a box of memories. But because that chapter was over didn't mean that the story had to end.

It was finally time to move on, no more dwelling on the glory days. Obsession wouldn't bring anyone back.

Breathing easier, she left the storeroom without tidying up. Eh, let a box of peanuts fall on the boy's fool head next time he comes looking for spring water. Life was too short to be stuck cleaning. It was like a weight had been lifted from her shoulders, a weight that had been there for so long that it had almost become a part of her. Envigorated by her sudden epiphany, Ellen never finished looking through the box. She didn't see that Bill had written another chapter to his own story.

At the very bottom of the crate, there was a yellow A4 envelope. Inside that envelope were several letters written in a steady hand. One to Ellen. One to Jo. One to 'the Old Crew'. One to John.

One to Henry.

And inside the journal that Ellen Harvelle never dared to open, the first clue to a puzzle patiently waited to be found.


	2. Achillies Heel

"_What? You can't do that! Just walk right up to one of them and say-"_

"_Why not? It's not like they have many other places to go."_

"_But just-"_

"_This is necessary."_

"_They'll kill me."_

"_You wouldn't be here if you weren't expendable. Sam Winchester _has_ to be here."_

"_And how were you planning to do that, exactly?"_

"_Go for the Achilles Heel."_

They were staying in a room above the bar for twenty bucks a night. Sam had complained, but then there was precious little his brother didn't complain about anymore. Sure, he took his lumps and bumps like a man, but he was… so… damn… annoying. Several times now Dean had almost been reduced to sticking his fingers in his ears and humming really loudly. Screw it, you didn't get to pick and choose with this gig. You went where the jobs took you.

On the flipside, it was a shorter commute for a beer.

The publican wasn't quite as prickly as Ellen, and the barmaid wasn't quite as cute as Jo, but Dean ordered himself a drink and made himself comfortable, propping himself up against the bar. A pretty little thing sidled up to him and chatted to him for a while, but in the end he decided that he really didn't feel like expending the energy today.

The girl ended up walking away looking bitter, and he clearly heard the word _faggot _as she slipped back into her circle of friends.

_Sore loser._ He almost said it aloud.

These were the high points in his life. No one trying to kill him. No one trying to kill Sam. No gunshots. No screaming. No impending doom of any kind. Everything still and silent and perfect for about ten minutes.

And then hell would break loose all over again.

"Can I buy you a drink?"

Although he had already consumed several so far, and his eyes were beginning to swim, Dean straightened. Damn, there was no way that he was gonna refuse a drink from whoever possessed that voice, husky and smoky with just enough femininity to make it work. He glanced to the woman beside him.

And was sobered up awful quick.

In the haze she first seemed like any other woman, and then you began to notice the little things. The hair just beginning to grow out of an army crop, a hard edge behind the eyes, the red-painted lips twisting into a familiar sneer as she looked him up and down.

This was the woman Sam never wanted to meet down a dark alley.

Captain Sally Wandell, daughter of the hunter Steve, currently ex-military, and a hands-on consultant for the FBI. And boy, was she one hell of a tracker.

She saved his ass once. Didn't want to know why.

_Hell was breaking loose again. Right on cue._

"This seat taken?" She asked, and Dean's hand tightened around his beer as if it had been her neck.

_And then she walked through my door._

_How did you find us? _He almost asked, and then changed his mind.

"What do you want?" His beer tasted oddly flat now, and he wondered whether that was because this woman soured all that came near, or his now-sober state had shaken the want for a drink out of his head completely.

"Two beers." Sally said to the barmaid, and pulled up a stool next to Dean. Two people having a chat. Nothing to see here, move along. Dean knew he should be worried. Here she was, approaching him in an apparently non-threatening way instead of swooping off to settle the score with Sammy.

Or maybe she was.

_Sam killed her dad ages ago, 'member. Guess what? You're the closest thing lil' bro has to a father, kiddo. Eye for an eye and all that junk._ He coughed as the thought made his drink stick in his throat. After clearing his throat, he turned to give her one of the patented Winchester Dark And Moody glares, but that just made her grin wider.

It wasn't a nice, friendly, here-have-my-last-quarter-to-feed-your-parking-meter grin. This was a decidedly evil expression. I-will-eat-your-children evil. The girl had something going on. "I'm hurt. Aren't we buds? We did exorcise a demon together."

Dean frowned. "You tried to extradite my brother."

Sally shrugged nonchalantly. "All's fair."

If she hadn't have been such a threat to Sam's continued existence, Dean would have agreed wholeheartedly with her philosophy. There_ was_ no holding back. We all did what we had to do. Just then, strains of Deep Purple's _Burn _began to emit from the phone in his jeans pocket, and he swiftly reached down to silence the call.

"That Sam?" The woman asked casually, sipping her drink. "Say 'hi' for me."

Dean almost growled. "You stay the hell away from him, or…"

_Or what? _Sally's eyes seemed to silently ask. "False bravado." She said conversationally. "Just when you think someone's got the jump on you. Every time."

While normally the news that a woman had been spying on him would amuse the hell out of him, now it just made him feel weird. _Sammy, don't you come down here. _"What do you want, Captain Wandell?" He sneered out her name and rank, but his obvious disdain didn't seem to bother her in the slightest.

"Would it have been so bad if Sam had been taken away?" She asked.

The question caught Dean off-guard. "You what?"

"Would it have been so bad if your little brother had been taken away," Sally repeated, drawing out each syllable as if she was speaking to a child, or someone a little dense. "Poor little Sammy. God, how many skeletons must there be in _that_ closet?" She stared up at him over the rim of her glass. Her eyes were flecked with green. "How long before one of you snap, Dean? How long have you got left? I mean, we might be able to stop _you_, being just… _one of us_, but Sam…

"He's the frikkin' Antichrist."

"What, that crap? Honey, I've heard it all before, and it's got whiskers on." Dean chuckled.

"Maybe not yet." The woman said mysteriously. He looked at her. _Haven't I heard that before? _"I think you know that. But really, Sam locked away, where nothing could happen? Go on, say that's honestly a bad thing."

Dean opened his mouth retaliate. He even began to think of an angry and sarcastic retort, but…

"Christo."

She laughed silently and shook her head helplessly. "Not everyone that doesn't agree with you is some sort of hellspawn." She said seriously, and Dean frowned. "You have a lot to learn."

That time Dean's jaw did drop. "You little… I know what I'm doing, thank you very much."

"Oh, indeed. Blundering from crisis to crisis, most of them you caused yourself." Her lip curled.

"What the _hell _do you _want_?!" For the first time, the barman looked at the duo curiously. Sally just kept on smiling, perched on her stool with her legs crossed. "What the _hell _is this? I hope you're getting a kick out of it."

"Calm down, sparky. I just thought you deserved a warning."

"A warning of what?"

"You never stopped it. You came close, but you didn't stop it. Lilith is coming, bringing her children with her. And Azazel."

"Azazel's dead."

"His plan isn't. Not yet. And he still has loyalists."

"How do you know?"

"I've been talking to dead people," Sally gave a twisted smile.

"What?"

"Bela."

"Shouldn't have asked." Dean said bitterly.

"No." Sally agreed.

"Why the warning? I thought you wanted us dead?"

"Dead? No." She shook her head. "Believe it or not, I'm trying to keep your ass alive. Something big's coming. And it's gonna go for you and your brother first. And as fancy as the pair of you are, there's no way you can take on an army."

"We've done it before," He said defensively.

"Do you honestly think Lilith is that easy to beat? References to her have stretched back for _thousands of years_, and you don't get to live that long if you don't know a few things. I've been told that she's been doing some top-level recruiting. None of those cry-when-the-Holy-water-hits, afraid-of-chanting-they-can't-even-understand types either. Real heavies. Guys that have been around before _Christ_. The traditional stuff don't work. And you pair have really pissed her off."

"And what do you want me to do about it?" Dean asked coldly.

She folded her arms. "All right, Muscles, you want to play hard ball? I can do that too." The scowl deepened on her face. "Thought you deserved to know the cold, hard facts before."

He looked up at her, eyebrows raised. "Before what?"

"One in a lifetime offer, Dean." Sally said. "Take it or leave it. You and Sam _could_ stay in some shithole place like this when the apocalypse hits, and see how long you survive, or… you could come with me."

"You're kidding, right?"

She lent forward. "Do I look like I have a sense of humor?" She asked. "I have friends. Powerful friends that could help you guys out. Make sure you stay alive. And we've found evidence of a weapon we can use against the army."

"Hey, we've already got one of those. It's called _the Colt_." Dean said brightly.

"One weapon won't go far in a war." She looked at him through eyes narrowed to slits. "Even a weapon with a never-ending supply of homemade bullets."

"How did-"

"Bela. She stole it once, remember?"

"Not one of my fondest memories." Dean quipped. "Got it back, though."

"Yes, you did. But you haven't answered my question yet. How far will _one_ weapon go in a war?"

Dean did not answer directly. "What are you proposing?" He asked carefully.

"There's a map. A coded map that is supposed to lead straight to the Secret."

"That's that book about happiness and healthy living, right?"

"Don't shit me, Winchester. This map was translated from Latin. It leads to the Last Hope."

Dean covered a smirk with his hand. "Sounding a little too _Indiana Jones _for me… What the hell is this Last Hope supposed to be?"

"It's a family. A bloodline."

"Wow, now we've gone all _Da Vinci Code_."

Sally Wandell gave a frosty smile. "Say you're not interested, and I'll go away."

Silence.

"_Telum of Cruor_."

"What?"

"A verse that was on the scrap of document that a colleague of mine discovered. It translates from the Latin as 'Weapon of Blood'. _Subpono per vir neco abyssus reus._ Which means 'Forged by Man to kill the Hell Bound'."

Dean's eyes widened. "The Colts." He said.

"The Colts." Sally agreed.

"What, they're still alive?"

"You sound surprised."

"Hey, the dude made a gun that could kill anything. I expect that he wasn't too secure in his continued existence."

"Well, in fact the Colt family died out some years ago. Or at least those bearing the name."

"Why?"

"Simple, Dean. Once we have the last Colt, we have _the formula._ Not just the blueprints of Samuel Colt's pistol, but the actual _formula_. How he did it. That's the Secret."

She held out her hand, and Dean just looked at it. She could almost see him weighing everything up in his mind.

"What do you say?" Sally asked.

"What about this code?" He asked shrewdly.

"We're gathering all our references as we speak."

He narrowed his eyes. "And the map?"

That was the one thing that did halt Wandell in her steps.

"You don't have it, do you?"

"Let's just say it's a work in progress."


	3. is quisnam teneo

In the end she had given him a telephone number scribbled down on a napkin and left, a swagger to her steps. She was not asking him for help, she was giving him _permission _to follow her.

Dean looked down dumbly at the number. The girl that had called him gay muttered another unsavoury comment as he rose and left the room.

Needless to say, Sam was less than impressed. As soon as he finished stalking around the room and growling, he whirled around to face his brother.

"Are you absolutely _insane_?"

"If I had a dollar…" Dean rolled his eyes. "Dude, what is your problem?"

"What's the problem? _What's the problem_? You've just signed us up for a field trip with Little Miss Psycho Loony and her marauding bandits. What's your problem?"

"I just thought it might be easier to keep an eye on them from the inside." He shrugged casually.

"Liar." Sam said wearily. "You only just thought of it."

"So? It's still brilliance."

All the fight seemed to go out of Sammy then, and he sat on the end of his bed, with his kicked-puppy face on. It kinda freaked Dean out. Normally he'd dig the heels in if he didn't want to do something. "So what do we do now?"

"Give the woman a call?"

Sam chewed his bottom lip for a moment before nodding stiffly. Having been given the affirmative, Dean fished out his phone and punched in the number. He waited. And waited.

"Christ, would you just pick up the phone already?" He grumbled under his breath.

The call connected.

He couldn't hear even the slightest breath. Hey, maybe the network was down. They'd been having a lot of storms lately.

"Hello? Anyone there?"

But only static buzzed in his ear. Dean looked across to Sam and raised his eyebrows. "Don't worry, Wonder Boy. Looks like Miss-share-and-care-alike has given us a dud number."

"Didn't see that one coming," Sam commented, somehow managing to keep his face perfectly straight.

"The sarcasm's my job, Mister College."

**…_help…me…_**

That he heard. _What the hell-?_ "What the hell-?"

Sam lent forward. "What? What do you hear?"

"Either we've been given a direct line to the afterlife or the voices in my head have got themselves a better service provider." Dean frowned. "Hello? Who is this?"

**…_who… this… we…_**

It was like several dozen people were trying to get in at once, and Dean pulled a face at his brother. "Phantom calls." He said, and Sam's shoulders slumped in relief. _Phantom callers. Done and done. Nothing we couldn't handle. Harmless._

Er, mostly.

Shaking his head a little at the memories invoked, Dean was about to close his phone. _**…help… danger… dead…**_

_**Winchester…**_

**… _coming… coming… coming…_**

Dean snapped his phone shut.

"Are you okay?"

"I think my phone is haunted. You think an exorcism would work?"

"I don't think the holy water will do anything this time. Give it here."

He watched as Sammy entered his recent calls register and dialled the number. For a moment he listened intently, and Dean could tell by the expression of disappointment that momentarily flickered across his face that the other end had been picked up by a real, live person this time.

"Uh, hi. This is Sam Winchester. You accosted my brother in the bar."

Certain that he didn't want to hear Wandell's snarky reply, Dean quietly backed out of the room to sit in the Impala and blast some therapeutic ACDC with the windows rolled all the way up.

* * *

There were only two explanations Dean could think of for the existence of the Blue Moon. It was either an opium den or a very seedy brothel.

Not exactly your average win-win situation. He actually winced as a couple of streetwalkers smiled at him, showing bad makeup, wrinkles, and missing teeth.

_Surely no one could ever be _this _desperate._

"Are you _sure _this is the right place?"

"Pretty sure."

"Come on, Sam…"

"Okay, really pretty sure."

Dean glanced at him sideways, an eyebrow raised. "You do realise how old that's getting, right?"

Sam did not grin, but the lines around the eyes told his brother that it was a struggle not to. Dean scowled. He was suddenly wholeheartedly glad that he had left the Impala at the lockup.

"Yeah, she said it was behind the club. Sort of like a basement."

"Great. She lives in the basement. Right when I thought my expectations couldn't get any lower." Dean rolled his eyes heavenward in a why-me gesture. "Right. Let's do this before some enterprising ten-year-olds decide to mug us."

Sam nodded, also eager to get off the street. He didn't like the way the streetwalkers' pimp was looking at him.

True to Wandell's word, there was the outside entrance to the basement around the other side of the Blue Moon, and by this stage both Winchesters were heartily glad that they had came armed.

"Do we knock, or…"

"Sam, it's a basement. I don't think the usual rules of etiquette apply." Dean kicked at the heavy wooden trapdoors, once, twice, three times. "Huh. I guess no one's home." He knelt down, and touched the large, rusted lock. "I can have this open in under a minute." He proclaimed.

"Dean!"

"What?"

"You can't just bust in. What if it's a trap?"

"And what if it isn't? We've had this conversation already, remember?" He replied, jiggling around in the lock. Suddenly he grinned. "Am I the only one half expecting some balding guy in inch thick glasses offering to show us his _Star Wars _collection?"

Sam just fixed him with a stern glare.

"Well. I guess I am."

"What do you do this?"

"Do what?"

"Turn everything into a punch line."

"I suppose if you don't laugh, you'll cry, and I've got a reputation to consider." The lock sprang open. "Ah!"

Sam couldn't help looking around as Dean triumphantly pulled open the doors. For the first time in a long while, their breaking and entering wasn't the worse activity going on in the immediate vicinity by far. But still, something was chewing away in a corner of his mind.

Something…

"We're backing ourselves into a corner," Sam hissed as Dean lowed himself into the hole.

"You're welcome to stay out here with the psycho killers and the creepy hookers." His brother invited. Gritting his teeth, Sam followed him into the basement.

You could hardly hear any of the noise from the Blue Moon above, and that in itself was a small mercy. Dean reached for the light switch, but the bulb must have blown.

"There's candles. And matches." Sam pointed. Talking up one of the thick, paraffin candles, he lit it and handed it over to his brother. He took one for himself, the wax smearing over his fingers.

"Well, doesn't this add that special something to the ambiance?" Dean commented dryly, holding his candle high. "I feel like I'm in a freaking teenage horror movie."

Sam was inclined to agree. But…

"Do you think these were left here for us?" He asked worriedly.

"Wouldn't it have made more sense to leave us a couple a' torches instead? Or even change the light bulb? Sammy, this world can only sustain so much coincidence."

"Dude, my _entire frikkin' life_ has been one long string of coincidences."

"Then go click your heels and tell yourself that there's no place like home."

_All right, no sympathy from that corner. _Sam walked up to the bookshelf, his nose right up against the spines so he could read them. "If this dust is anything to go by, no one has been down here for a long time."

"Or else they were not much of a reader." Dean said. "That looks pretty well used."

Sam followed his line of sight.

"A computer?" He mused. "Down here?"

Dean wriggled the mouse, and the monitor sprung into life. Emblazoned across the screen was a still of Wonder Woman at her most jiggly. "Jeez, we've found the lair of Comic Book Guy." He chuckled.

His little brother did not share his humour. "There's something wrong here." He said, and brought up the list of documents that were last accessed by this computer.

And didn't like what he found.

"Dean, someone's been compiling profiles _on us_." He said grimly. "Look. Surveillance footage. Family. Acquaintances. Known girlfriends."

Dean lent over his shoulder. "Hey, it's even got where Georgia Howell dumped you over the loudspeaker at the Homecoming dance."

"Thanks, Dean. Really."

Dean just smiled. "Admittedly, creepy. Stalker-creepy. But I don't think this is any immediate threat to our health."

"How can you say that?"

"Have a look. See any official seals or anything?"

"No. But all that means is that who's doing this is doing it _unofficially_." Sam said. "And might not be as friendly as the cops."

"Yeah, yeah. Let's just get out of here." Dean blew out his candle and turned back to the open trapdoor.

That was when the man peered down into the basement.

"Hello there, kids," He said, flashing a toothy smile. "Having fun?" He looked harmless enough, until you noticed the eyes. Like staring into a pit. "Sorry, boys, but you're not coming along for the ride this time."

Dean stopped. He looked surprised, and these days he was rarely surprised by anything anymore. Having a freakout session just wasted time. "God, I _know _you."

"Maybe once," The demon grunted. "I'm different now."

"I see that."

"Anyway, I gotta job to do, so if you two mind not trying to escape and all, that'd be good. Cheers."

As the smiling demon wrested the doors closed, Sam moved forward. "Hey-!"

Dean grabbed his arm as he passed. "Not this time, kiddo."

The two of them watched as the doors thudded closed. There was a scrape of something barricading them in. Sam ripped his arm from his brother's grip. "What the hell was that? Stop-the-brother-so-we- can't-escape?"

"No, that was stop-the-brother-so-we-don't-get-our-asses-killed." Dean snapped. He whirled about, hands on his hips. His face was set.

"This was a trap all along," Sam continued. "I knew it. _You_ knew it too." He sounded almost accusing, and Dean didn't like that.

"Well, now the trap's sprung, let's find out why it was set."

His cavalier attitude was really beginning to tick Sam off. "That's not hard. To keep us here, that's why!"

Dean turned back to his brother. His expression was grave. "Why's that?"

Sam opened his mouth to reply, but nothing came out.

_Someone wants to keep us here, out of the way. That's why._

Dean sat down in front of the computer. He peered at it apprehensively for a moment before once again opening the recently accessed files, before switching to the file directory and the network. "Uh, Sammy?"

"What now?"

"It's clean."

"What?"

"Dude, everything else except our files are wiped."

"Out of the way." Dean vacated the seat as Sam plonked down in front of the computer.

"What are you doing?"

"A trick I picked up at Stanford." Sam said. After a moment of typing, a list of deleted documents slowly appeared on the screen.

"I thought you were in there to be a lawyer, not a detective."

"When I was nineteen," Sam said. "One of my professors was accused of paedophilia. Me and a friend broke into his office and got all these files he tried to dump."

"Yeah, and…?"

"Nothing to write home about. Turned out the guy was just some small town Satanist trying to speed along the Apocalypse."

"Potential destruction of the world as we know it. Hmm. Must have been a Tuesday."

Sam smiled.

"Oh, Sally. What _have _you been up to?" Dean mused, as Sam browsed the deleted files.

"You know, maybe it wasn't Wandell." Sam offered hopefully. "Maybe this was, is all a setup and she really had nothing to do with this at all. Maybe she's possessed."

"Oh, I don't think so. She's not possessed, and she's definitely in this up to her eyeballs."

_Yeah. I'd like a nice and easy one. Why does it always have to be so damn complicated?_

"Hey, look at this."

"They look like journal pages." Dean said.

"Old ones." Sam agreed. "All signed by the same guy. Is quisnam teneo."

"The what now?"

"'He who knows'." Sam said. "And whoever he was had a good grasp of language. I see Latin, Italian, Spanish…"

"So our mystery boy was a star linguist. Any idea why someone tried to get rid of these files?"

"I'm looking." He peered closer at the Journal pages. "No. This here is talking to his brother about a horse he bought last winter…"

"Ho hum."

Then one particular line seemed to jump out at him, and Sam had to grapple with it for a moment to fish out the meaning from several possible outcomes.

_frater cruor ero forfeit._

"You've got to be kidding me."

"What does it say?" Dean asked, and for the first time, Sam was heartily glad that his big brother never had a particularly good grasp with the Latin.

_Brother's blood will be forfeit._

Signed by He who Knows.


	4. Darcy

She watched them out of the corner of her eye as she worked in the garden, the sun beating down onto the back of her neck. The woman was in a grey power suit with her hair swept back, and the man beside her was similarly dressed, however looking quite out of place and uncomfortable. She noticed that the pair looked like they had their poker faces on, and she knew at once that they meant business.

Standing, she pulled off her gardening gloves and brushed herself down. As the duo noticed her noticing them, the woman cocked her head to the side as though she was sizing up her prey and the man attempted a smile, the muscles in his face twitching as though he wasn't used to using that particular expression often.

"Oh no." She said to herself aloud. _The vultures are hovering ALREADY?_ "Hi there." She smiled politely and offered her hand out as they got to the front gate.

The man shook it. "Hello. May I assume I have the pleasure of addressing the delightful Bree?"

Alright, she'd admit he was a smooth one. And hell, not bad looking either. Pity he wasn't, like, twenty years younger. Or even ten. "I'm Bree."

"Nice to meet you, Bree. I'm Doctor Sam Ferris, and this is my associate Doctor James Brown." The woman said. The corners of her eyes crinkled as she spoke, and there was a no-nonsense air around her. Bree decided she liked her. But still…

"You got some ID? Like, my old man's super-conscious on the security scale and it'd be a real drag if he smoked someone that didn't, like, need shooting." Any other time, it would have been funny. But the sheer earnest way the girl said it made Dr Ferris and Dr Brown exchange looks before reaching for their wallets.

Bree scanned the IDs that they offered. Dad insisted that all strangers identify themselves, but there was no way in hell she could spot a fake even if she was staring at it. _Leyland Stanford University._

"Hey, aren't you guys, like, a little too _old_ to be students?"

"Stanford likes to stay equal opportunity." Dr Brown said dryly.

"Anyhow, what would you guys be doing all the way down here?"

"We were actually hoping to see your father. Is he in?"

That was it. The girl's face closed and became hard. "Hey, what do you two, like, want? Dad's pretty out of it most of the time, right? And we're not selling the business. So if that's what you're after, you better clear off."

"I've actually met your dad a few times. I was hoping I'd get the chance to see him again before…" Sam Ferris left the sentence hanging, and Bree felt her blood rush to her face. _Before…_

"He's not in his right mind, most of the time." She said miserably. "But I'm sure as heck he would have mentioned it if he'd ever gone to Stanford."

"We didn't meet at university." Ferris said gently, offering no further information, and Brown nodded his assent. "Please. Only five minutes." As Dr Ferris held up her hands, trying to look innocent and Dr Brown standing mute with his hands behind his back, Bree gave in.

_She sounded so darn _earnest.

"Alright, yeah. C'mon in."

"Thank you." Ellen Harvelle said soberly, and looked over her shoulder at Bobby Singer. He shrugged a little as they followed Bree into the house.

"Just don't ask him about the shop." Bree warned. "Don't, like, even bring up the _possibility _of him selling the shop."

The shop in question was only next-door. Her father liked to boast about the fact that it had been in the family for five generations. Five generations. But now Bree was off to drama school, her big brother had scored some great corporate job three states away, and little brother was presently absent. None of the family knew exactly where.

But Dad refused to sell the shop.

* * *

As Dean proceeded to stalk around the room thumping at the walls, Sam continued his computer search. Many other filenames seemed completely nondescript, and there were thousands of them. He skimmed down the list hoping something would catch his eye and stand out against all the other mundane folders. And one did.

Do you believe.doc

He opened the file.

_Sam & Dean_

_I've re-typed this several times in the last two hours, hoping to get it right. Hoping to put down all the facts. It seems unbelievably trite to write 'if you've found this, then I'm already dead', but I believe that is what's going to happen. Or at least, I can only hope that death is all I have to worry about._

_I've deleted every document off this computer, but left the temporary files existing in a backup format. If you're as smart as I've heard, you shouldn't have too much trouble getting past the security protocol. _

_So to work._

_In 1835 Samuel Colt built a gun for a hunter. No one ever figured out who the hunter was, but Sam wasn't so secure._

He stopped reading. He had never heard anyone ever call Colt just Sam before. Maybe bad luck was somehow associated with the name. "Hey Dean, get over here."

_When the hunter died, some lore says that Sam took the Colt and hid it, half to protect his family and half so that we wouldn't loose our only advantage over Hell's demons. Either way, the Colt wasn't seen for centuries later, when it resurfaced in the hands of a certain Daniel Elkins._

She knew about Daniel Elkins! How long had she been watching them?

_We all know what happened from there. You and your brother used the last original bullets, opened the Devil's Gate (you're still gonna get an ass-kicking for that, by the way), and the Colt rode with you for a while before the delightful Miss Talbot stole it. But not to be outdone, you pair go and steal it back. Genius._

_And now every devil and his mother know you have a demon-killing gun. Even Dean must realise that wasn't a very good move._

_But I'm not talking about the Colt._

"What's up, little bro?"

"Check this out."

_I'm talking about the blueprints. The notes. The formula. HOW COLT DID IT. Think of it. We could make our own arsenal. Our own weapons. Our own Colts, without relying on the help of a demon who may or may not be evil (yes, I know about her too. Ruby, was it?)_

_Now the lore I've found states that when Colt's hunter friend was killed, he divided up the blueprints among his allies, each of them taking one part of the documents. He devised a map, and it was cut into sections. When brought together, the map leads to the last of Colt's notes, and I believe it lies with the descendant of Sam Colt himself._

_At this moment, you're wondering why I'm telling you this. This evil bitch that wants you dead, but didn't kill you when she had the chance. What's her game? It is not just me and my companions that are after the notes anymore, there are others too. You have to stop them from finding the key, the last Colt. The notes __can't be allowed __to fall into their hands._

_Following is a list I have compiled, of Sam Colt's more casual acquaintances. All those who worked on this with me are listed in my journal, which is in the bookshelf behind Batman. If you can, warn them that they are in danger and they need to lie low._

_It is a shame that I never got the chance to meet you properly, I think I would have enjoyed the chance to speak to you without the threat of impending disaster looming over all our heads. _

_PS: Tell Dean he should wear that red shirt more. _

_PPS: When you find your way out, tell the barman that you're working for Darcy._

_Captain S. Wandell._

* * *

Jo was feeling good. Her spirits were high and she actually hummed as she caught the bus, but she knew that most likely she would become once again dour and depressed the moment her and her Mom stood face to face.

It wasn't that they particularly loathed each other; it was more like both women felt like they had let the other down spectacularly, and they had yet to discover how to face up to that perceived disappointment.

If Jo passed through LA without dropping in on her mother to say 'hey', Ellen would kill her. Mom would find out. She always found out.

The bar looked pretty much like it always did, and there was this real Roadhouse feel to it. Jo felt like she was home. People that had known her since she was a little girl, or younger folk that had worked jobs with her shouted their welcomes, or tossed their heads in acknowledgement. This was where she belonged.

"Hey, Ruben. What's up with Rock and Smoke?" Jo sidled up to a tall, dark-skinned man that was leaning against the bar. She indicated to a pair of old men that looked even more bitter than usual.

"Ah, those pair are all pissed 'cause of these smoking restrictions in bars they're trying to bring in."

"The crap's hit the fan 'cause they have to go outside for a fag? My heart bleeds." Jo replied. "Hey, my mom around by any chance? Thought I'd drop in before I dropped out again."

"Leaving a trail of devastation in your wake?" He didn't miss a beat.

Jo didn't reply. "Mom?"

"You missed her by about ten minutes. You probably drove past each other in the street. Her and Bobby went off somewhere. Said they were off to see a old friend. 'While they still could', she said."

"Sounds ominous."

"She was thinking of calling you."

"Oh, yeah?"

"But she reckoned you wouldn't have picked up the phone."

_I probably wouldn't have. _"So you're stuck watchin' the bar?"

"Nah. She's got the new fella to do that."

"The new fella?"

"Him in the denim. Cooks a mean steak."

Jo peered back over her shoulder to the man Ruben was talking about. He wasn't much taller than her, with a slight build and brown hair that just wouldn't sit down. As he walked back across the room with a tray of knifes, he caught her looking.

"You must be Jo." He shouted across the ruckus.

"I must be." Jo shouted back. He was really kind of cute, even though he had to be maybe seven years older than her.

"I'm AJ." He said, dumping the knives on the countertop.

"Hey."

"Hi."

"Nice to meet you."

"Likewise."

"Your mom's told me a lot about you."

"Don't believe any of it."

"So…"

"So?"

"Can I get you a drink?" He asked.

* * *

_**1981**_

"Oh my gosh, you'll look so hot in this."

"Danny Bastion will be _so_ eating out of your hand,"

"My god, where were you when I got over Danny?"

"Hiding under the nearest available rock."

"Hey, it was cool there."

All three of them laughed. You rolled with the punches, didn't you? Polly helped Veronica fold the peaches-and-cream dress back into its box. "I bet that cost a pretty penny."

"A whole pay packet." Veronica said proudly.

"Are you _mad_, girl?"

"I could ask you the same question." Veronica stabbed a perfectly manicured finger. "And why, I ask, is darling Ellen, the school's sweetheart and the girl every mother wants their son to take home, not going to the dance?"

"You're not going to Homecoming?" Polly was aghast. "That's, like, a teenage right of passage!"

Ellen shrugged. She brushed down her skirt. "Lately dances don't do much for me anymore."

"Hold her down Poll, she's possessed!"

And Ellen laughed with the rest of them, because she didn't know the truth. Not then.

"Is it about Tommy?" Polly asked sympathetically. "It's about Tommy, isn't it?"

"_No_." Ellen said defensively. "Dad's back."

Both girls winced. They knew a little bit about Ellen's dad, a strange man that would appear suddenly and disappear just as suddenly. Ellen's mother seemed to loathe him with a fiery passion, but when she had a bit too much to drink (which was a lot of the time, lately) she'd cry and demand to know what she'd done to loose him.

Ellen hoped that she wouldn't ever become as broken and bitter as her mom. Life was screwed up enough already.

"Mom's making me spend time with him before he ships out again."

"Low blow." Veronica winced.

"Too bad."

"Tell me about it." Ellen said. "Catch ya on the flip side."

"Later."

She watched her friends walk away before turning to head up her own garden path. Then something caught her eye.

There was an open sign on the long-derelict store next door.

Ellen propped her chin up on the fence railings. There was a name stencilled roughly into the brickwork. _Darcy's Daemons. _She had no clue what a daemon was, but it sounded cool.

A car pulled up in front of the store. She recognised it and bobbed down behind the fence so she wouldn't be seen. _He_ came out, ladling his arms with books. He was tall and _way_ up on the 'hot' scale, his dark hair swept back expect for once curl that draped rakishly over an eye. Ellen pulled in a breath. She hadn't seen many sophomores up close before. They tended to steer away from the younger students.

Even as she wathced, he tripped, books flying. Cursing, he knelt down to gather them all back up. God, even his swearing voice was sexy. _Go girl._ Ellen told herself. _Get over there. Give him a hand._

He looked up as she awkwardly started up the path, and she glanced away from his piercing gaze. She reddened, hoping he didn't notice her checking him out. Wordlessly Ellen knelt and helped to gather the last few books.

"A little light reading."

"Huh?" She looked up.

"A little light reading." He indicated his books, and Ellen's heart skipped a beat. He was smiling at her. "Thanks." _A cute sophomore guy was smiling at her!_ She almost looked over her shoulder to see who else was there.

"No problem." She squeaked.

_Please don't notice how embarrassed I am._

"Bill Harvelle." He held out his hand, and calluses and blisters caught at her smooth palm. Ellen wondered whether sitting around looking cool was really that strenuous.

"I know. I mean, I've seen you at practise."

"Huh. You watch the game often?"

"Sometimes." Ellen admitted shyly. "Hey, how about you carry half and I'll carry the other half?"

"What?"

"The books?"

"Oh, yeah. Sure." He surrendered some of them to her, almost reluctantly. "You live near here?" He asked, leading the way to the store.

"Next-door on the left."

"Girl next door. I like that." Ellen went red again as the sophomore laughed. Was it her imagination, or was there an almost manic edge? Nudging open the door with his foot, he held it open with his elbow and ushered her inside. "Milady."

"It's nice to know I have my own cheering squad. I didn't know I was that well liked." He continued.

"You're the most popular senior in high school! Everyone likes you."

Another chuckle, the agitated undertone slightly more pronounced. "They like the Bill that they see on the surface. That's the popular one. If they saw me on the inside, they'd freak." He said darkly.

Ellen swallowed. That sounded funny, and she edged away from him a little bit. Bill Harvelle caught the small gesture.

"I'm not about to do a school massacre, if that's what you're thinking." He said casually. "Merely stating that if I saw a counsellor for my collective personality flaws, he'd be the one coming out clinically depressed."

Ellen smiled, and looked around the store. There were rows and rows of books, some glossy new prints and others, older, larger, dustier, and definitely more obscure. At any other time, she would have wandered over and taken a look. In fact, many of the books she was holding looked incredibly unsuitable for a student of any age.

"Boy, have you got my books? If you have damaged them, I swear I will kick your arse from here to – oh, hello."

A man appeared framed in the staffroom doorway. He wore thick-rimmed glasses and a tweed jacket, but somehow didn't look any the less bumbling for it. _The librarian from hell. _Ellen hid her giggle behind her hand.

"You brought a friend." His smile was slightly too wide, and his cheerful tone slightly too forced, and Ellen inched away, stepping into Bill's shadow.

"I guess I did." Bill said.

Then the man held out his hand to Ellen. "Theodore Darcy." He said solemnly. "Pleased to make your acquaintance."

"Charmed." She said. "Ellen."

"Girl next door." Bill said with some amusement and Theodore Darcy peered at him disapprovingly at him over the rims of his glasses.

"Put my books back." He instructed shortly, before turning his back on them. Bill shrugged and raised an eyebrow at Ellen, indicating that the stuffy old book dealer was often, if not always, like that.

"I'll go put these away." Bill said. "You – go browse."

"Oh, okay."

_Hands in your pockets. _That was the first thing Ellen's dad ever taught her, when he drove them up to coast to the house of a strange man called Fletcher and his dozen cats. The house had been filled with so many wonderful things, but Fletcher had warned her that they were made pretty so folk would touch them. And they'd get into trouble.

Dad had weird friends.

"Bill, your mother is on the phone." She heard Darcy shout across the room.

"Hi, Mom." Ellen turned away, not wanting to eavesdrop on his conversation.

It wasn't long before he hung up the receiver. All expression was carefully washed from his face. He looked older, somehow. "I've got to go." He said, running a hand through his hair. "Um, my dad's in the, er, army and he's shipping out again." The disappointment must have shown on her face. "Look, I'll look you up when we get back, yeah?" He offered hurriedly.

"Sure." Ellen said gloomily, watching him wave at her and speed off. "See you."

There was a hand on her shoulder. "You look like you could use a cup of tea." Darcy said.

_She didn't see Bill Harvelle again, at least not for a very long time. In the end, he never really did tell her where he disappeared to for those long years._

_What she did know was that Theodore Darcy grew anxious over his absence, and three years after he vanished from town, Darcy knocked on Ellen's door and asked her whether she was willing to learn what he had been teaching Bill._

_He asked her whether she believed in demons._


	5. Family Ties

Inside Darcy's house had always fascinated Ellen, and would undoubtedly continue to no matter how old she eventually became. No matter how entranced she was, feeling like she was a teenager again, her partner was less than impressed.

"Lots of books." He muttered.

"He owns a bookstore, Bobby."

"Who the hell does this store cater to? Satanists?"

"Depends what you classify as a Satanist." Ellen replied coolly. "Darcy is an old friend of mine and he don't like lip from some punk young enough to be his kid. Mind your manners or I'll whup your ass."

Bobby raised an eyebrow slightly. Sure, he knew about Theodore Darcy. Most hunters of his particular antiquity heard about him sooner or later. The famous, if eccentric, archaeologist and occultist. He'd been working the beat for close on sixty years, and Ellen had been Darcy's protégé long before Bobby had met her. Long before she became a Harvelle.

Legend said that Old Man Darcy could lay a smackdown on your ass old-skool style.

And now he was dying.

She had to see him.

It was only a coincidence that Bobby decided to come too. He said he was coming to work a gig not to far from here, and would give Ellen backup should others turn up at Darcy's graveside that weren't particularly there to offer their condolences and last respects.

The old man was in his late eighties. The last time someone had killed him was on his seventy-ninth birthday.

Bree Darcy tentatively knocked on the dark oak door in front of her, before peering around the frame. "Dad? Dad, you've got a couple of visitors."

"Tell 'em to get nicked." A crotchety old voice answered her immediately.

The girl hopelessly shook her head. "Sorry about this," She whispered. "He can be a little… bull-headed about things."

"Just because I'm old doesn't mean I can't hear you, girl. Tell 'em to get the hell outta my house!"

"Darcy."

"Hey!"

Ellen pushed past Bree into the room, and stared. He still had the glasses, but the thick, dark hair had fallen out and turned grey, his cheeks were scarred and waxy and his ever-sharp eyes were sunken back into his skull. Ellen couldn't help herself.

"Oh my God, you look like crap."

"Don't like to break it to you honey, but the years ain't been so nice to you neither." He stood. Bones in his kneecaps cracked, but he crossed the floor with a surprising agility for someone so old and before Ellen knew it, he had flung one bony arm around her shoulders and gave her a half-hug.

Ellen had been in the same room as dying people before, and the air had stunk with the sweetly sticky smell of decay. Darcy had on some sort of woody aftershave. Even after all this time he refused to go quietly. "Damn, it's good to see you." He held her out at arms length to appraise her, and the corners of his eyes crinkled as he smiled.

His daughter was looking awestruck. Darcy looked over to her. "You go back to pottering about your garden." He said, gently but firmly.

"But Dad, the doctor said no physical exertions for you." Bree pointed out flatly.

"Girl, look at the three of us and ask yourself what possible physical exertions we could be getting up to at our ages?" Ellen caught Darcy's wink, and she tried not to smile. Even Bobby looked less stoic than usual. She could see Bree working it through in her mind, before finally coming to the consensus that anyone over forty wouldn't be getting up to serious strife anytime soon.

God, the things Ellen could have taught the girl, but then, when she was eighteen, she too thought anyone over thirty was old.

"All right." The girl said finally. "But Dad, the doctor said…"

"Since when has what the doctor said stopped me before?" He asked chirpily, and as Bree's shoulders slumped, Ellen guessed that dealing with her father wasn't her greatest skill.

"Okay, Dad." She said. "You better not or I'll, like, call Mom." She said ominously.

The corners of Ellen's mouth quirked in a grin. _A fate worse than death…_

"Ah, alright, you little viper. No physical exertions for me. I guess that snowboarding is out of the question, then?"

That was the last straw. Bree harrumphed and spun on her heel, closing the door behind her with a bang.

"Sweet Jesus, is she always like that?" Ellen asked with some surprise.

"Mostly." When his daughter was out of the house once more, Darcy seemed to slump. He sagged on his feet before sinking back into his chair with a groan. "Too much of her Mom in her. Stubborn as."

Bobby's expression clearly said _I understand that_ as he glanced sideways at Ellen. She ignored him. "Which Mom is that?" She asked, arms folded. "Mom number one, two, three or four?"

"Number three." Darcy said, as unflappable as he had always been. "Y'see, I was so good at getting married, I had to do it again and again. Just like some people had marriages made in heaven, all mine were made in Taiwan. Fell apart within a few months."

You could almost feel the waves of disapproval emanating from Bobby. "Who's your friend?" Darcy asked, feeling under the comforter. A moment later, he withdrew a bottle of bourbon.

"Are you supposed to be drinking that?"

"Now you're sounding like my forth wife," Darcy said casually, snapping off the lid with his teeth. He still had a complete set of molars.

"This is Bobby Singer. He's a friend of mine, so be polite." Ellen said warningly.

"I'm always polite to your friends."

Ellen snorted.

"Singer, Singer, I think I've heard of you, Bobby Singer." The old man said, resting his glasses on the bridge of his nose and leaning forward. He squinted at Bobby for a moment, as older folk were prone to do. "Ah, couldn't place you for a moment there, old son. But I've got you now."

"You know him?"

"Him? He's the one that went out and made my niece an honest woman."

Ellen's jaw almost hit the floor.

* * *

The Winchesters now were in possession of three journals. The first, and the most battered, was, of course, the one that had belonged to Dad. It had got them out of more scrapes then they could ever have thought was possible.

The second used to belong to the hunter-cum-thief Adrian Jones. Half of that one was obsessing about the death of his three-year-old son, and the other half was written in code that even Sam hadn't managed to decipher yet.

The third was the journal belonging to the army captain, and possibly already dead, Sally Wandell.

Her notes were clear and concise and to the point. She never really started recording in it fully until her father's funeral, and Sam felt a stab of guilt, even though it wasn't technically him behind the wheel when Steve Wandell was murdered.

Still, guilt by accessory and all that.

Sam read. He learned about all the research she had been doing, and he learned that she was never actually tracking them in the first place.

Sally had been after the Colt all along.

_The Colt bleeds, _she had noted on one page, and neither of the brothers could come up with an explanation.

And he leaned that she believed that some or all of her team had become compromised.

_Take a guess._

Detective Elizabeth Montgomery, a not entirely legal psychic detective. Dr Adrian Jones, a man that had faked his own death so completely that it even fooled his brother and father. A man only known by his nickname, 'Spots'.

And Bela Talbot.

_Kill them before they kill you._

Sam snapped the journal shut just as his brother made an announcement. "I've found the way out."


	6. AJ

He was cute, he was funny, and he was smart.

It made Jo wonder why he was stuck in a joint like this.

"You gotta girlfriend?" She finally blurted, over her forth beer. She was feeling a little light-headed, which was unusual. Normally she could drink any of the boys under the table at any time.

AJ raised an eyebrow at her. "Depends. Are you volunteering?" He asked cheekily.

"I might be." She replied flirtatiously. Her moves were a bit rusty, a bit unused. There was never really the opportunity to pick someone up at the Roadhouse. It made Jo think: if this was what Mom's hired help normally looked like, maybe she should leave more often.

"You didn't tell me where you're from."

"A bit of everywhere, really." He shrugged. "You know what it's like."

"Mm." Too right she did. "And you _willingly_ ended up in a place like this?"

"Are you insinuating something?"

"All I'm insinuating is that hey, bartender at Harvelle's place. Been there, done that. Not exactly the most secure of careers as careers go. I mean, no regular wage, holiday pay, compensation payouts for severed limbs, and absolutely _zilch_ job satisfaction. I might've been able to make it work if it wasn't for the occasional ass-grab by some old perv. That was it for me."

"What, you too?" AJ sounded astounded, and Jo laughed. "Yeah, I getcha." He said, serious once more. "Some things just cross the line."

"No kidding." Jo said. She looked at him sideways. "So. How did you end up here?" She asked curiously. "If that's not too… intrusive."

"Intrusive? You?"

"I _do_ know what sarcasm is."

He smiled. It seemed a little painful now. "My son." He said simply, quietly, and Jo almost spilled the rest of her drink down the front of her shirt. _Of course he has a son. And a pretty wife out there somewhere too. Girl, your taste in men _completely _sucks ass._

"He was killed." AJ continued.

"Oh, jeez." Jo muttered, put on the spot. "Look, I'm really sorry. I knew I shouldn't have asked. God, I really need to get that filtering system installed between my mouth and my brain." She shook her head. "I shoulda known you'd have some disaster."

"Excuse me?"

"Look, dude, people don't just drop in here for coffee and cakes." She pointed out. "We all got our private disasters."

"Even you?"

"Well, since this is the only thing I've ever really done, my diasters are more public than private." Jo said. "But at least I haven't got some split-personality alias thing going on. Accountant by day and fly-by monster hunter by night. I couldn't do that."

He smiled again, and Jo decided that he had a cute smile. "What was his name? Your kid?"

"Jack. His name was Jack. He was three years old."

"What happened to him?" Jo almost didn't want to know. How come all the neat guys she ended up meeting were always dragging a truckload of emotional baggage behind? "I mean, if you can tell me and all."

"Me and my ex-wife had gone down the coast for the weekend. We were staying in a converted lighthouse, of all places, and Jack, he… He followed the voices I had been hearing. I thought they were just the product of an overworked mind, until Jack fell off the top of the lighthouse."

"Oh, man."

"The wife and I split up, and for a long time after that, I was a bit… you know."

"The guys I've met that are doing this on a revenge kick are all a bit… you know." Jo said. "The voices? Did you track them down?"

"Mermaids."

"No shit?"

"Ugliest sons of bitches I've ever seen," AJ declared flatly. He cast a look around the bar. "And seeing this bunch is saying a lot."

"Most people, when I've asked them about why they're here, they just turn around and walk the other way."

"I can do that if you want me to." AJ said. "Sometimes if you bottle it all up, all it does is eat you away." He added wistfully, with the weight of experience behind his words.

"Word."

"And I've done my time. For the first time in a long while, I'm not feeling guilty. It's… liberating."

"Kudos to you." Jo said earnestly.

"What about you?" He sat up straighter on the barstool. "Why are you here?"

"I guess I'm just a messed-up kid that can't seem to tear herself away from her Mommy." She shrugged. "My dad… he died a while ago on a hunt. It's my way of keeping him alive."

"You weren't kidding."

"About what?"

"We all have our private disasters."

"Thanks a lot." Jo said dryly.

"Whoa, I didn't say you were a disaster." His eyebrows rose.

"I'm not, huh?"

"Well, from what I've seen, you're funny, smart, pretty spunky, and not bad lookin' either." His eyes did a quick sweep up and down, and Jo felt her face redden. "And as I say that, I hope you aren't mentally equating me with the old pervs that liked to play ass-grab."

"You're excused." Jo said. She lent forward to kiss him.

* * *

There was an awkward pause as Darcy and Bobby appraised each other, and Ellen wished she had been anywhere else in the world. The last thing she needed was to be stuck in the middle of a raging domestic, even though Bobby never raged. He quietly simmered, letting the wounds fester.

"So." Darcy said.

"So." Bobby replied. "I hear you're dying, old man."

"Happens to the best of us eventually. Just some of us get to do it when we're young and pretty."

"I gotta say, normally the thought of dying scares the shit out of people."

"It's been a long time coming, son." The old man sighed. "I'm tired. So tired of this whole sorry mess, and I can't say I'll be sorry to leave it all behind. It's been a long night, and I'm ready to let it all go."

"What is it?" Ellen asked. "Your daughter wouldn't say and no one on the grapevine knew for sure. Cancer?"

Darcy let out a bark of laughter, and Ellen could see it now. He was just skin and bones, a shadow of what he had been. He wasn't strong anymore. He wasn't fit. He was just another old man, and he resented that. "Cancer? I should be so lucky!" And there was no mistaking the bitter edge to his voice this time.

A dark edge.

"Darcy?"

"It's come." The old man said in a low voice, motioning both Ellen and Bobby forward. "It's come back and I can't do _jack squat _about it. It's seen me, and now I've got to pay the piper, no questions asked. It's come for blood."

"What's come?"

"The doppelganger."


	7. Killer Double

Dean was on his hands and knees, cheek pressed to the cold floor.

"What. The. Hell. Are. You. Doing."

"There's fresh air coming through here. Give me a hand to shift this." He instructed, dusting off his jeans before grasping the heavy bookshelf.

"Dude, it's bolted to the wall. I don't think-"

"Sam, for once could you stop whinging and just do what you're told?"

Rolling his eyes a little, Sam took up position on the other side. "We're not gonna be able to lift this, you know."

"If I listened to every two-bit demon spawn that came my way, you could probably make the damn thing float across the room." His brother retorted.

"But I'm telling you, we're not gonna…"

The sturdy, hardwood shelf began to move. Or rather, it began to slide smoothly to one side. Dean looked at Sam wordlessly, his eyebrow cocked.

"Don't say it." Sam warned. "It's probably on casters, anyway. And technically, we didn't _lift_ it."

The brothers had emerged in front of a narrow flight of stairs, which turned away sharply to a door that undoubtedly lead directly into the Blue Moon. Sam handed Sally Wandell's journal to his brother, and Dean slid it into his jacket beside Dad's and Adrian Jones's.

At the top of the stairs, Dean's hand closed around the handle and he and his brother exchanged a glance. _On three…_

_Three._

The door opened. Sam was half expecting to be caught in harsh light and the dozens of accusing glares from the patrons, but what he got couldn't have surprised him more.

The aroma of chocolate muffins hung in the air, and at the table closest to him and his brother, two elderly women were drinking tea. There was a middle-aged man at a corner booth compulsively piling sugar into his coffee, and a dour-looking gentleman threw salt over his shoulder before joining him.

Sam took a step forward, and a small cloud of dust rose around his feet. "Check it out." Dean knelt down and rubbed some on his fingertips.

"What is it?"

"Goofer dust." He rubbed his fingers clean. "Look." He pointed above the door lintel; of both the way he and Sammy had come in, and back across the room where the main entrance was.

"Devil's shoestring." Sam said. "Hey, check out the vases on the tables."

On each and every on of them was a hoodoo protection charm. "Dude, what the hell…?" Dean muttered under his breath.

"Got me." Sam mumbled back.

"What the hell do we do now?"

"Ah…" Sam mused, his eyes running over each person in the utterly bizarre place. Finally his gaze settled on the barmaid, a fine-looking woman with long black hair that looked like she could beat even Dean in arm-wrestling. As Dean looked on, very nearly astonished, he walked right up to her.

"Hi there. I'm Sam and this is my brother Dean. Darcy sent us over."

The woman looked him up and down. She glanced over to Dean. There was absolutely no expression on her face, and Sam began to wonder whether he had miscalculated when she replied.

"You took long enough." She said. "I've been hearing about how old Darcy is on his last legs, but darn, could you have taken much longer?" Hanging up her dishcloth, she came out from behind the bar. She smoothed her short denim skirt over her thighs and Sam elbowed his brother in the side before he could make a move on her.

Dean kicked him back.

"Kate." She shook Sam's proffered hand. "He's over here." She motioned them to follow him. "Hardly ever left the joint since he's seen it. Scared that as soon as he goes, the damn thing will tear his head off."

Sam and Dean exchanged a look behind her back. Neither of them had a clue what she was going on about. The barmaid turned around and looked at the pair. As she appraised them more closely, she came to her consensus.

"You boys ain't from round here, are you?"

"No." _Thank God. _"Just rolled in."

"We got word from Darcy and left." Dean added. "Dude wanted us on the road, never even gave us the specifics of the case."

"Sounds like Darcy." The barmaid chuckled.

"So, it's a different place you got here." Sam started.

"Yep."

"Couldn't help but notice all the protection wards you got around."

"Precautionary measure." She said. "Some of my customers, they're – how would you put it - not very popular with the underground populace."

"How do you mean?"

"You roll the dice, you pay the price."

"They're hiding out." Dean said. "Aren't they?"

"This place, it's not invisible by a long shot, but it's the damn closest we're ever gonna get."

Sam could tell by the expression on his face that his brother was furioursly grappling with something. "Why? These people are going to Hell. Why are you helping them?"

"We all make mistakes. All these people only ever got the chance to make the one."

"The money's pretty good, huh?" Dean said dryly.

"Don't you turn up your nose at me like that, pretty-boy." The barmaid snapped. "I ain't made any deals. I'm not on the wrong side of _anyone_. _Nothing _has given you the right to look down at me." She scowled back at Dean and for a second Sam began to wonder whether the game was up. "Listen, bud, like it or not, we're all here to get as much as we can."

Dean carefully remained tight-lipped. Kate seemed aware of his animosity, but she acted as if the attitude was nothing new to her. "See him?" She pointed across the room.

There was a young guy sitting at the end of the bar, a Coke at his elbow. He couldn't have been more than twenty.

"Harry Turner, nineteen." Kate said. "He's got your kind of problem. Darcy said he would send someone 'round, though he _had _mentioned something about Sally someone."

"What's the problem with the kid?"

"That's your problem. I have work to do." And she left them to get back behind the bar, leaving the brothers awkwardly standing in the centre of the room.

"We could just leave."

"We could. Are you going to?"

"Just call me Glutton For Punishment." Dean shook his head.

The young guy looked up apprehensively as they approached, a curl drooping foppishly into his big, doe-eyes.

"Hey." Dean said. "I'm Dean. This is my brother Sam. Darcy sent us around to look at your problem of the less-than-natural-kind."

"I was expecting a woman."

"Hey, you haven't known Sammy for that long." Dean said, unable to resist. "I'll go get drinks, I think." As Sam sat near the kid, Dean ordered two beers and a fresh can of Coke. Looking back at the kid, at the shadows around his eyes, he must have been running off the caffeine alone.

"So." He got back to their end of the bar and took up a stool on the other side of Harry Turner. "You gonna tell us about it?"

"Harry, we wont judge you." Sam prompted gently.

"Go ahead. Everyone else has." The Harry kid sounded so incredibly jaded and bitter for someone so young. He reminded Sam of himself at that age. "There's nothing stopping you guys."

"Doesn't the fact that we've been doing this since before you were born count for anything?"

"I'll believe that." Harry said flatly. "How old are you anyway, forty?"

"Forty?!" Dean ran a hand through his hair self-consciously before turning to Sam. "Do I really look forty?" He asked anxiously.

Sam raised an eyebrow. "I wont lie to you, brother. You are starting to show the mileage."

Harry almost smiled then. Almost.

"So, what's the deal?" Sam asked.

Harry gripped the drink can. It popped and warped under the pressure. "About three years ago I started seeing it. A shadow in the corner of your eye. I thought I must have been imagining it at first, but then it began leaving me messages. Stuff written on the bathroom mirror in blood, dead things were left around the house. I didn't know what the hell to do, yeah?"

Sam nodded sympathetically, though he had no clue where this was headed.

"It followed me everywhere, _learning._ It even went to my _senior prom_, for God's sake. I couldn't shake it."

"Why was that?"

Harry took a sip of his Coke. "Because is _was _me." He said.

"I'm not following."

The kid tried to keep up his tough veneer, but crumbled at the last moment.

"It's my double, my doppelganger, and now it wants to do me in, to take my place."

Dean blinked. Sam opened his mouth and then closed it.

"See, you think I'm outta my tree." Harry said curtly, turning away. "Like everyone else."

"Dude, believe _me_ when I say we've seen all nine kinds of crazy." Dean said. "I just… We've done shape shifters and all that, but I don't think we've… ever… done… a… doppelganger." He glanced at Sam for confirmation.

"No doppelganger." Sam shook his head.

"So, can you help me or not?"

"Well, I dunno…"

"I really can't say…"

"I can pay you, if that's what you want." Harry said, a little more urgency to his voice. "Come on, man, I'm in deep shit here."

Sam could tell that Dean was rolling around the notion of being paid for a gig around his head, and the small grin that curved up the corners of his mouth confirmed it. Sam shook his head. Profiteering off the endangered? It was the same thing Dean had been giving Kate the Barmaid crap about.

"Never mind the money." Sam said. "You got a problem and we can sort it out. Let's leave it at that, yeah?" Unlike his brother, the thought of being bought or hired was somehow unsettling.

Dean looked slightly disappointed, but his brother gave him points for his recovery. "Okay, background check." He said. "Please answer with a yes or no. Have you ever A) Made a dead with the devil. B) Summoned a demon by moonlight. C) Participated in any arcane and/or occult rites, or D) Are aware of any family curses?"

"What? Hell, no. What the hell kind of crazies _do_ you deal with?"

"The crazier the better." Dean said. "They make me look sane and responsible in comparison."


	8. Blue Moon stories

She watched them talking to the kid, that Harry Turner. One was tall with a protruding chin and soft eyes, while the other just looked rather unkept.

She knew who they were. What she didn't know was how they had found their way into the Blue Moon. Only those in dire need of protection ever came here. And why were they staying? She gazed at them curiously once more before she paid her bill and walked out the door.

They had not seen her, and would not have recognised her if they had.

The night was still, and the quiet weighed heavily on her mind. The fog was so thick it was suffocating, causing her eyes to water, her throat to sting.

Coughing, she stopped, leaning over the railing.

_Damn allergic reactions._

She didn't notice the liquid blackness oozing up through the grate over the gutter, and when she did, it was already too late.

She did not scream.

It forced itself down her throat, into her eyes, into her body, taking away any possibility of crying out for help.

As her eyes opened of their own accord, she knew with a feeling of dread what had happened to her. What _was _happening to her. And she cursed herself for not being more cautious. Like AJ.

Her hands brushed down the front of her suit jacket. "Oh, honey, you need some new threads." She said aloud. Then she smiled.

"See you later, Lizzie. Someone else is behind the wheel now."

With a strut she never had before, Detective Elizabeth Montgomery walked back to her car.

_If that Sally Wandell hadn't wanted her team compromised, then she shouldn't have made such a mess of things._

The demon wasn't aware that from the stoop of an empty building two doors away, it too was being watched, by a woman with long, dark hair and sad eyes.

Bela Talbot grimaced and turned away. It was breaking up, all of it.

Hell was coming to earth for all of them, and she wasn't sure she could get out of it a second time.

* * *

Jo closed her eyes, AJ's strong arms wrapped around her as heartbeats slowed and bodies cooled. She felt safe and wanted as he held her. Feeling his warm breath on her neck, she idly wondered how his wife had let all this go.

"You're lucky I have a thing for older men. You_ really_ need to spend more effort on your hard-to-get routine. I hardly had to work at all."

AJ propped himself up on an elbow as she looked up at him. "Look who's telling who to play at hard-to-get? You're lucky I let you play the tease."

"Ooh." Jo grinned, rolling onto her side. "Watcha gonna do about it?"

He gently cupped her chin in his hand, before softly tracing the curve of her throat and lower. She didn't stop him.

"Ah, it can wait. You've used me up, woman!" AJ flopped back down onto the pillows. "You know you're getting old when you'd rather go to sleep." He sighed theatrically and swept a hand across his eyes. "And I've got the early shift tomorrow and everything."

"You know you love it." Jo said absently, dropping her head on her shoulder. "You're not old."

"I'm not? I was in college six years before you started sophomore."

"Rub it in, why don't you?"

The two of them chuckled in the darkness. Jo's digital watch said it was past midnight. She sighed.

"What is it?"

"Just thinking." Jo said.

"About what?"

"This. How do we deal?"

"What?" AJ raised an eyebrow before realisation dawned. "Oh. You mean the whole 'sleeping together' thing."

"I guess. Like, do we slink away in the morning and never speak to each other again, or be forced to face each other every day while you're running the Bar for Mom?"

"Do we have to make a big mess of things?" He asked the ceiling plaintively. "I like you, you like me, one thing lead to another, and here we are. I keep running the Bar until Ellen shows, and then I decide whether to split or not. You do your thing, and, well…"

"Well what?"

"Well, we could go out on a few dates. See how things go."

"Dates?"

"You know, that thing that normal people do?"

"Where would we go?"

AJ shrugged. "I don't know. Somewhere nice. Where we wouldn't be required to be packin' at all times. That's one hell of a mood killer."

"That's a biggie." Jo nodded. "AJ?"

"Mm?"

"Since we're…" _Come on, you can say it. You've wanted to say it for a long time. _"Dating and all, could you… not tell my mother? I mean, I can sort that angle out, yeah?"

"Me? Tell Ellen? Have you any idea what she would do to me?" And although the tone was joking, she knew he was deadly serious. Ellen would not react favourably to something else coming along and stealing her daughter away from her.

"So…"

"So?"

"You staying tonight?"

"Yeah." Jo hid a little grin. "Yeah."

* * *

It was almost midnight, and Dean was wet, muddy, his jacket smelt like second-hand smoke, whatever was in the beer had made him sick, and now, instead of the one annoying little brother, he was dragging around two.

"Are we there yet?"

"Five minutes."

"You said that fifteen minutes ago!"

"He's got a point, Dean." Sam said in that level tone of his, and Dean was sorely tempted to pull the Impala over to the shoulder and kick the pair of them out. Sam was just being his usual annoying self, and… okay, maybe the Harry kid had an excuse for being an ass.

He was sitting on the backseat hunkered down into his hoodie and scowling. He seemed impatient to get to their destination, and every few seconds a muscle would twinge in his cheek. Some sort of a nervous tick. The kid was wound up and freaked out good and proper. So freaked out that on the outside he was frighteningly calm.

Dean turned his eyes back to the road ahead, and sighed. What he would not _give _for a break. A nice long one, with sun, sands, gay drinks with the little umbrellas, and a couple of hot girls. Hell, he'd just settle for sun.

Instead of the rain.

Always with the damn rain.

The Impala rolled to a stop outside the block of apartments the Winchesters were staying at. Harry looked suitably underwhelmed.

"Is this it?"

"Were you expecting the Hilton?"

"This is a feakin' hole in the wall." The kid said, and Dean could tell that his expectations of the brothers had just sunk a further notch.

"All the better to hide away in," Dean replied. "I mean, we don't exactly want housekeeping to find something like this." He gave Harry a quick glimpse into the bag he pulled out of the Impala. Inside were three hunting knives, two shotguns, several pistols and innumerable amounts of ammo.

"Cool." The kid was unfazed. "I got myself a bag _just_ like that."

The sarcasm just wouldn't die. Dean raised an eyebrow. "What's your deal, kid?"

"What?"

"Who are you?"

"What's that got to do with anything?"

"I'm curious. I get into a lot of trouble that way."

"Not me. I'm _so over_ the curiosity bullshit." He almost growled as he said it.

"You have parents? Friends?"

Harry Turner mutely shook his head. Twice.

"Must be pretty hard."

"You get used to it." The kid said with an air of finality. "You have to."

"Come on, throw me a bone." Dean said, rolling his eyes. "I'm trying to be nice here. I want to see where you're coming from, where you're at."

"Are you the touchy-feely brother?" Harry asked. "'Cause quite frankly, it's not doing anything for me."

Okay, so Mister Grumpy wasn't the sharing type. Dean glanced over to Sam, who looked deceptively innocent. "How do you do it?"

"Do what?"

"Get them to tell you whatever you want to know?"

Sam just smiled. "One cannot learn such a skill. It has to come naturally from within."

"Don't you start your Zen crap on me,"

The kid went almost straight to the fridge once they were in the room, and his expression of disinterest soon turned to one of disgust. "Do you guys have anything here that isn't beer or left-over takeaway from four days ago?" He asked.

"No you're _really_ pushing you're luck."

"We haven't really hit the ground since four days ago." Sam said.

"Have a beer."

"I'm only nineteen."

"It might make you less of a tightass."

"Dean!"

"What? We're always getting stuck with these babysitting gigs and they all totally _bite_." Dean said, glancing sideways. And then he stopped talking. Were the lights playing tricks on him, or did the kid really, actually, just flash a grin?

As soon as Harry noticed him looking, the small smile faded away into a scowl. As the brothers busied themselves with their salt lines and suchlike, Harry compulsively played with the cord that hung around his neck.

Sam glanced up in time to catch a glimpse of some sort of amulet on the end of the cord before the kid tucked it away out of sight. "You know it will follow me." Harry said emptily. "You guys could get in trouble."

"Kid, we deal with trouble all the time." Dean said. "Your little problem with the boogety-boogetys isn't exactly gonna scare us off. We've had bigger and badder monsters than yours hiding under the bed."

"Uh huh." Still not a favourable response. "So what do we do now?"

"You sit there and don't make any trouble. Sam and I'll research this thing. See how we can bring it down."

Harry came very close to rolling his eyes then. From his pocket he withdrew a ring of keys. "Here."

"Thanks," Sam was vaguely surprised as he took Harry's offered memory stick. It wasn't often that they ran into someone that had done all the research for them.

"A great lot it'll do you," The kid smiled wryly.

"What do you mean?"

"You'll see."

Sam fired up his computer, before plugging the memory stick into the port. The kid had done his homework. Looking at the amassed files, he had been researching since he was only young.

_A __**doppelgänger**__ or __**fetch**__ is the fictional ghostly double of a living person, a sinister form of bilocation._

_In the vernacular, "Doppelgänger" has come to refer to any double or look-alike of a person. The literal translation of the German word is "double–goer," meaning someone who is acting the same way as another person. The word is also used to describe the sensation of having glimpsed oneself in peripheral vision, in a position where there is no chance that it could have been a reflection. They are generally regarded as harbingers of bad luck. In some traditions, a doppelgänger seen by a person's friends or relatives portends illness or danger, while seeing one's own doppelgänger is an omen of death. It is widely known that one must actually touch a doppelgänger to die. _

The rest continued in the same vein. How evil they were. How they were you, just not quite perfect. But in all the resources that Harry downloaded, not once was there a mention of destroying the creature. One stated outright how the chemical reactions in your brain were responsible for the appearance of these 'delusions'.

Harry noticed Sam look up. "See what I mean?"

"Fine." Dean said. "If there's no specific lore on the thing, then we can blast him the old fashioned way, right?"

"Sounds simple enough in the theory. How do we lure it out, then?" Sam asked.

Harry looked up as both the Winchesters gazes fell on him.

"Crap."

* * *

Still half asleep, Jo reached out beside her to where AJ would have been. His side of the mattress was stone cold.

That woke her up. _No one sleeps with me and then sneaks off! _

But that indignation vanished when she realised she could hear faint noises from the rooms below. Someone was going through the Harvelle stuff and trying to be quiet about it. Rolling from bed, she pulled on an outsized jersey and some track pants.

Something was up.

AJ had laughed at the notion of her having a hockey stick by her door even though she had no clue how to really play the game, but this stick wasn't for playing hockey. She hefted it in her hands. Jo liked her stick.

She padded down the stairs, her bare feet making no noise on the cold wooden floor.

The basement door was open. Jo glanced that way in confusion. "Is anyone there?" She called.

"Hey."

"Oh, hi." Taken by surprise once again, Jo balanced the stick on her shoulder and grinned sheepishly at AJ, who was sipping a glass of water.

"Going to do some damage? I hope the intended target wasn't me." He commented wryly.

"Oh, ah, this? It's nothing, really." She stuttered. "Hey, did you hear anything from down here?"

AJ cocked his head to the side. "Besides you and me having an awkward confrontation? No."

"Okay." Jo said. It was then that she noticed the papers behind AJ on the countertop. The ones he was ever so casually standing in front of. Something about them struck her as awfully familiar. "What have you got there? Don't tell me that I've been left high and dry for a stack of-"

"Jo, don't-"

Jo picked up a sheet.

_My dearest Ellen, you can't imagine how hard-_

"-mouldy old paper," She finished dumbly. Everything was still and silent and frozen in time for a microsecond before it shattered around them. "Oh my God." She whirled to face him. "This is my father's handwriting!" She shook out the letter angrily. "Why the hell have you been going through our stuff? Do you get off on this?" She demanded.

"I was looking for something."

"Yeah. What?"

"Nothing that concerns you." He said curtly.

"What do you mean 'nothing that concerns me'? He's my father. What-" Realisation dawned, and she took a step back. "Oh, hell." She whispered.

"Sort of."

"No." Jo stepped back again. Her heel hit the back of the glasses cabinet. "That's not possible. You _can't get in here._"

"I assure you, it's very possible."

"How – how long have you been in him?"

The demon smiled. "Long enough to see things that the kiddies don't get to watch before eight thirty."

* * *

AN- It'll all start to fit together soon. I hope.


	9. Harry

Jo raised the bat above her head. This wasn't the way it was supposed to go! _Boy meets girl, girl meets boy, the inevitable happens before girl finds out boy is a demon._

_It's official, Jo. Your taste in men is messed up!_

"Stay where you are and don't move!"

AJ, the demon, whatever, raised an eyebrow. "You'll only end up hurting this body." He said. "And I don't think you'll do that."

"Oh, and you know me so well." She sneered.

"I've seen more of you than you would care to realise. Not just on the outside, but on the inside as well."

"Okay, _eew_." Jo said. "In this world of double-entendres, you gotta be careful with what you say, yeah?"

AJ cocked his head to the side. "There we go. You come across as this hard little party girl who no one can rattle, but you fall to pieces as soon as someone shows you the slightest bit of affection." And the words stung so much more because they were true.

"Alright, hey, I get it. You've been reading my diary, haven't you?"

"Not yours." The demon said.

_Dad's journal._

"What is your deal?" Jo whispered.

"I'm here to infiltrate the enemy." The demon said. "Your father had some very important information the Hierarchy wanted. Unfortunately, he's been dead for some time."

"You don't say." Jo said dryly, watching as he picked up the Journal and began to slowly leaf through the pages.

"Your dad's rather long-winded. I hope he gets to the point soon." The demon replied, not in an inch upset by Jo's attitude.

"Point about what?"

"Now, Joey dear, if I told you that, I would have to kill you." He said, without a hint of irony.

"You're going to kill me anyway."

"You could have stayed all tucked up and warm in bed. Then no one needn't have died. Do you really think I'm going to tell you anything? Especially when you hunters have an awful habit of coming back to life." Judging by the glint in his eyes, Jo was almost certain he was referring to _one _person in particular.

"Why are you doing this?"

"The same reason you do. To stay alive." The demon said curtly.

"Who are you?"

"An enemy of She who would be Queen." And there was no mistaking the vehemence in his voice. "Have you ever heard of the adage 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend'?"

Jo nodded dumbly. "You're fighting Lilith."

He raised his eyes to hers. "I needed an edge. Your father may have just given me that edge, and for that I will spare you and your family."

"I'm touched. Really."

When AJ next looked up, his eyes were a sparkling milky white. "Should my endeavour work, I shall owe your family a great debt and you will be honoured among my kind." The demon said civilly.

"Great."

"Do you know Dean Winchester?" He asked suddenly, as if struck with a sudden thought.

Her mouth went dry. "Me? Know Dean Winchester? Hell, no." She squeaked. But even as she opened her mouth, she knew she had put her foot in it. He looked at her, those creepy eyes narrowed. She felt like she was going to faint, or throw up.

"Tell him that Belial is coming to retrieve what he stole."

And then AJ collapsed to his knees, before a dark cloud began to wrench itself from his body and he screamed. Jo watched wide-eyed as the dark, angry cloud circled above the two of them before being absorbed into the walls.

There was a cough. Jo looked down. AJ sat cross-legged on the floor, massaging his temples. "Oh, my head." He groaned softly, and Jo sank down by his side.

"Are you okay?" She touched his shoulder.

He gave her a look. "Just peachy." He said tightly.

"Well, this is awkward."

"You're telling me."

And, of course, that was about the time Bobby and her mother walked in. Ellen silently looked around at the mess and slowly raised an eyebrow. Her face was impassive. AJ and Jo glanced at each other like guilty children.

"Do I want to know what's been going on?" She asked.

"Mom-"

"Ah. I don't want to hear it."

"Listen, Ellen, we were-"

"And you can shut it to." She looked him up and down. "I'm in a bad mood already," Ellen said pleasantly. "So I strongly advise you to not. Piss. Me. Off. Clean up this mess."

Bobby gave them a sympathising look as he followed her into the staffroom.

"When I'm fifty she's still gonna be telling me to grow up and stop making a mess." Jo lamented.

"She's concerned. That's what your parents are supposed to do."

And so Jo and AJ began cleaning up the papers that the demon had been going through so eagerly. Jo scanned each page she touched, hoping for some insight into her dad's great secret, but nothing really jumped off the page. It all seemed to be the usual stuff.

"Hey, look at this." AJ was holding a letter. On that letter was the postscript _to Henry._ "Do you have a Henry in your family?"

"What? No." Jo took the envelope. "What the heck-?" After a moment's indecision, she opened the envelope. A single sheet of paper fell out, covered with Bill Harvelle's handwriting.

"Don't you know it's rude to read other people's mail?"

"You're awfully chipper for someone who's been possessed."

"Who said it's my first?"

Jo left it at that and turned her eyes down to the page.

_Henry,_

_I don't know whether you've been told this yet, and I don't even know whether I should be telling you, but you have to live. For all our sakes._

_Your father was always in two minds on if he was going to tell you of your true heritage or not, so for all I know you have a completely different name and life now, now that your dad took you guys off the road._

_The first thing you must know is that demons are real._

_In 1835, Samuel Colt made a gun for a hunter. It's said that this gun can kill anything. That man, that Sam Colt, was your ancestor._

Jo and AJ looked at each other.

_There will be people, things out there trying to kill you. But if you're reading this letter, then you've managed to find the few people in this wide world that can actually help._

_Legend says that Samuel Colt knew this would make his family targets, and that he divided up his notes among his closest allies. I have seen the notes, but I do not possess them anymore. I am thankful for that. They are incomplete._

_To get to them, you must go to a man named John Winchester. _

_The final secret lies with the fourteenth._

_WA Harvelle._

* * *

The boy wandered alone through the dimly lit streets, ands in the pockets of his jeans. Occasionally he would kick at a pebble and watch it bounce down the street.

Harry wanted to go home so badly.

He had no clue why it happened; all he did know was that when other teenagers were worried about pimples and who they were going to take to the prom, he was out avoiding his foster-family's house like the plague, bunking with friends and generally living rough. What should have been the time of his life had been turned into a living hell.

By _himself._

He'd never actually seen it in person, which was a small mercy. No, several of his friends had.

Hence the reason he didn't _have _any friends anymore.

Harry couldn't remember it ever having _not _been there, since his father's death, whereby he was passed around the relatives like a hot potato before being finally taken into care.

He never stayed with the foster families for very long, either. Ever since his doppelganger had pushed that little boy down the stairs. So he decided that the only thing he could do was go it alone. For a long time there was no hope.

Until he met Kate and she introduced him around that whole new underground culture. And maybe, just maybe, he could find someone willing to sort his problem out.

Though Harry still had difficulties fully accepting the supernatural.

Something grated on the cement behind him, and Harry jumped, his feet actually momentarily leaving the ground. He whipped his head around so fast that it made his neck ache.

"Hey, sweetie. Fifty for fun?"

She was what TV told you a streetwalker would be like. Tall and thin with thick, lustrous hair and pouty lips. Harry probably would have checked her out if he hadn't been so pee-your-pants frightened.

"No thanks. 'Nother time, maybe." He mumbled, getting away from her as quickly as he could. No time for distractions.

Harry was almost down at the end of the street when it happened.

"_You should have taken it up."_ The doppelganger stepped out from under the stoop of a deserted house. _"Probably the best offer you're ever gonna get."_

"Leave me alone," Harry hissed. "Go back to whatever hole you crawled out of."

"_But Harry, it's so much fun out here. And I like making you squirm."_

"Alright, I'm here." Harry stopped walking. Turned around slowly. "What the hell do you want?"

"_I want you dead."_

"Come on, then." Harry said. "Come and get me. I'm open."

"_Listen to all that bravado. I know you are dying inside. I _made_ it happen." _The doppelganger stepped into the light, and Harry stumbled a step back at the familiar sight of his own face. _"You are a coward."_

"Yeah. Yeah, I am. I'd rather be a live coward than a dead hero any day."

It dove for him. Harry bunched his fist and drove it up into the doppelganger's chin. Blood sprayed. Harry felt bizarre about the fact that he was beating up on himself. _"Insignificant wretch!"_ It spat. _"I can hardly understand why She wants you gone."_

"She? Who's she?" Harry panted, rolling to the side as the doppelganger moved in the pummel him again.

"_You are not even worthy to breathe Her name." _The creature sneered at him.

"Oh, what a pity. I guess I can live with that." He hissed through gritted teeth.

And that was when the first shots were fired. The doppelganger dropped and was still. "Holy crap, man!" Harry shouted. "Where the hell were you two? The dude was gonna puree me, for God's sake!"

"Oh, don't worry about it. I'm sure you can still be pureed." A woman's voice came out of the darkness. The voice was hoarse and hard. "But if you don't want to, then I suggest you be a good boy and do exactly what I tell you."

"Who the hell are you? Where are Sam and Dean?"

Sally Wandell came forward. She was pale and thin, and seemed to radiate 'evil'. "Don't you worry that cute little head of yours. My friends are taking care of them."

Harry didn't like the sound of that. Not at all. "What do you want?"

"Just this." And she reached forward under his jacket.

"Hey-!"

She pulled out the Colt. Harry started forward. "You can't – That's-"

"The marvellous, magical, demon gun." She said. "And those two fools entrusted it to _you. _Now why would that be?"

"Well, I…"

"Let me tell you why." The woman again reached forward. Harry prayed that it was a trick of the light that made her eyes appear so black and dead. She took hold of the cord around his neck, searching for the amulet. "It was instinctive, you see. They would have not turned the weapon over to just anyone."

There was a bullet on the end of the cord. It was old and battered, and she turned it over in her fingers searching for the proof of what she knew had to be there. Harry just stood still within her grasp, petrified.

There was a number engraved into the side of the bullet.

14

"The fourteenth bullet." The demon breathed, and Harry knew without a doubt that's what this woman was. A demon. "Ha. You might have well been wearing a sign around your neck saying 'My name is Colt'."

"My name isn't Colt." Harry said. "I don't know what you're talking about." He ripped himself backwards, away from her. Slowly she raised the Colt. "Don't make me use this." She said. "It would make one hell of a mess."

"What do you want?"

"I want the fourteenth bullet." Harry's fist tightened around the pellet. "The last puzzle piece. And then our Lord Belial can finally take back his power from that upstart Lilith."

"You know, news of a apocalyptic demon war just doesn't have the same effect on me as it once did."

"Dean!" Harry breathed out in relief. "Sam. You're not dead."

"No. I'm kinda that way." Dean agreed. He turned his attention to the woman. "Hi, Sally. Long time, no see." And that was when he shot her.

"Ohmigod." Harry stepped forward. "You _killed _her."

"If only." Dean rolled his eyes. "That bitch is always following us. It's getting kind of creepy."

Sam bent to retrieve the Colt. "It wont be long before she's up again. We better split."

But just as he finished speaking, the black smoke began to funnel out of the body and into the night sky. Dean pressed something into Harry's hand. "That'll keep you from being possessed."

"I really need to talk to my therapist." Harry muttered.

After it was gone, the three of them stared down at the female body before Dean stepped forward and tentatively kicked at her boot.

"Gerroff." The woman growled. "Oh…" She rubbed her forehead before squinting up.

"Good morning, sunshine." Dean grinned.

She looked up at him. "Oh, God. I've died and gone to Hell."

Sam smiled.

"Nice to see you too." Sounding slightly affronted, he took her hand and pulled her to her feet.

"Captain Sally Wandell." The woman introduced herself to a stunned Harry. "Um, sorry about the-" She cocked her head to the side.

"Hey don't worry about it." Harry said, feeling numb. "What happened to you guys?"

"Ah, you know. The usual."

"Usual." Sam agreed. Harry just stared at them, still processing the fact that this was indeed normal for the Winchester brothers.

"I'd hate to be you guys." Harry stated. "Never really knowing when someone was gonna-"

"Sam, behind you!"

"-Pull a knife on you," Harry finished lamely.

"_All of you. Get back before I slit his throat." _The doppelganger hissed, a wicked-looking blade pressed firmly against Sam's jugular.


	10. Questions

**AN –** Thankfully, I'm reasonably happy with this ending to a rather ordinary fanfic. Sorry, no big revelations, but at least the Sally Wandell arc has wrapped.

Sam, Dean, the Impala, Jo, Bela, Ruby, and anything I forgot to mention aren't mine.

* * *

The sun was up, and it was really quite pleasant. Belial pushed through the grass and ferns until he was beside her, staring out into the endless nothingness. She did not turn to look at him.

"I take it this is not a social call?" She asked.

"No." Belial said.

"It never is."

"I want you to do something for me."

"Oh, yes. Help the rouge leader. Don't you think I'm enough out of favour already?"

"You are afraid."

"I do not want to die. Do you?"

"Yet I am prepared."

"Of course you are." She raised an arm. "Look around you. These are the Deathless Plains. I understand now why they turned this place into a prison."

"Help me, and all will be forgiven."

She ran her tongue across her teeth. "What if I don't want to be forgiven?"

"Listen to me, bitch. I don't see you getting any better offers." He growled.

"When you're the best option, I would rather sit here and rot." She retorted.

"You can go back." Belial said.

She stiffened. "What?"

"Go back to the surface. Back to your allies." He narrowed his eyes. "I can make you human again."

"You are the Lord of Lies. Do not think I would be caught so easily."

Belial smiled. "Think on my words, dear Ruby. One job. One job to avenge yourself against Lilith. One job in exchange for the rest of your life as a human. I will return. You will give me your answer then."

And he left her, still standing on the isle, unable to move, unable to escape, but forced to watch the world roll by without her. Leaving her to her dreams.

Dreams where she was human again.

* * *

"_Get back!"_

Captain Wandell took a step forward, her arms held wide. _See? No threat here._

"_I'm telling you, get back!" _The creature seemed almost on the verge of hysteria, and Sam winced as the knife made a shallow cut in his skin. Dean bared his teeth in a snarl and Wandell stopped.

"Calm down." She said.

Dean realized then that the woman was not addressing the doppelganger. Rather, she was talking to Harry. The kid was standing off to one side, clutching the amulet like a lifeline. His eyes were wide and there was a crazy edge to them.

"Henry, calm down."

"Henry, why are you calling me Henry?" The kid looked at her like she had just told him she was Darth Vadar. "That's not my name."

Sally Wandell closed her eyes momentarily. "Of course." She breathed.

"Of course what?" Dean growled.

"Of course the Colts would have dropped anything associated with their old lives and assimilated into mainstream society." She replied tightly.

"Dammit, I'm not a Colt! My name is Harry Turner!" The kid shouted, the manic edge creeping into his voice.

"Okay, kid. Chill. Just chill." Dean raised his hands. "Calm down."

"I am calm! Don't I sound calm?"

"Harry, you've picked a bad time for it," Sam said.

"You can control it." Captain Wandell continued in her soothing, level tone.

"_Shut up!"_

"Control it? I can't control it."

"Yes you can. Just focus."

"What are you doing?" Dean hissed.

"In some cases, a doppelganger is a very literal and very dangerous form of a split personality." She continued on. Dean just looked at her. "A true manifestation of your dark side. Every dark thought you'd ever had, every evil little desire, all your anger, all your frustration and hate, it combines and mutates."

Harry didn't say anything. Just stared at her.

"You _can_ control it. Just believe in yourself."

"Now would be a good time for someone to do something." Sam said

"We're getting there, Sammy. Hold on a bit longer."

Harry gave Dean and Sally a panic-stricken look before turning back to the doppelganger and Sam. "Drop the knife." He demanded, his voice still quavering. Dean felt almost proud that the kid had finally found his backbone.

"_I can't believe you're actually stupid enough to believe her," _The doppelganger sneered, but even as it spoke, Sam could feel the knife involuntary inching away from his throat. Dean just blinked. Hell, was Wandell right?

"Drop it!" Harry shouted, and Sam was keenly aware that one wrong move and he might die anyway. His arm free, he elbowed the doppelganger as hard as he could in the stomach.

The creature dropped the knife. Sam stumbled forward into his brother, Dean swore, Sally wiped the sheen of sweat from her brow, and Harry continued to stare forward with steely determination. "Thank god." The woman sighed. "I didn't know whether that would work."

"You didn't know that would work?" Dean demanded.

"Shrill down, Winchester. You sound like a woman."

"It's a tulpa?" Sam questioned seriously.

"Sort of. No. My father said that under extreme circumstances that part of a person can break away and become… what we saw."

"Fascinating. Can we kill it now, please?"

"We can't." Captain Wandell said flatly.

"What? Why not?"

"Because they're the same damn person, that's why not." She snapped.

"So what the hell do we do about it?" Dean demanded.

"_We_ don't do anything. _He_ does."

"You're me." Harry said.

"_Once." _The doppelganger replied. _"Not anymore, thank God. You have such a friggin' pathetic existence, man. Really, if you were dead, who'd notice? The barmaid at that place you never had the balls to talk to?"_

Harry held up the Colt. His firing arm hardly shook at all. "I'm going to kill you." He said flatly.

"_Go ahead." _The doppelganger sneered. _"Pull the trigger. What the hell I wouldn't give to get out of your meatsuit. You humans are so one dimensional."_

"I got news for you, pally. You're a human, too. You're gonna die."

_"I was. Before She found me. My Queen, my God. Lilith the Immortal One. As soon as I'm out of this skin, I've been promised a place. By her side for all eternity. So yeah, dude, pull the fucking trigger."_

"I've done the whole eternity bit. Believe me, it plays hell with your head." Dean said. "Let's just put the gun down and play nice."

"Yes." Harry lowered the weapon. "Killing is too good for you. You get to live. Like the rest of us."

"And, hey, I bet Lilith will be real pleased with you not being able to off the kid here." Dean put in helpfully. "So pleased, I'd reckon, that she'll add your head to her collection of People that Really Pissed Her Off."

There was a massive transformation over the creature then. He looked frantic, almost terrified. _"You can't leave me!" _He bellowed. _"You cannot leave me because I am you!"_

And that was when it dove at Harry. Sam and Dean immediately started forward as the doppelganger began pushing the Colt back into Harry's chest.

A single shot was fired.

For a moment none of the three watchers knew who had been hit, as the creature went limp and Harry dropped to the ground, curling protectively around his abdomen.

"Check it." Captain Wandell ordered.

"It's dead." Sam reported back gravely.

There was blood in Harry's mouth. Sally looked across at him. _The Colt bleeds._

"Kid? Kid!"

"It hurts." He whispered.

"I gathered that." Dean resisted the impulse to roll his eyes. "Have you been shot? Are you dying?"

"Why does it hurt?"

"Because part of yourself is dead." Wandell knelt by his side. "You'll take a while to heal psychologically."

"It always does." Dean muttered. Sally was the only one to hear him, though she pretended not to. "Hey, look at that."

Still where the kid had dropped it, the number fourteen bullet had cracked right down the middle. Wandell picked it up. "It's hollow."

Inside was a tiny slip of paper, with one line written across the page in spidery, flowing handwriting.

_Find Theodore Darcy._

_S. Colt._

* * *

The four of them were back in the Impala. Harry was alternatively looking at his shoes and his watch and Wandell was staring out the window, careful not to make eye contact with anyone. Dean could tell that this woman didn't accept charity lightly, even though they were only giving her a lift to the bus station.

Nothing was said when they dropped her off. Sally pulled out her long rifle case and walked around the car to Dean's window. "Here."

Dean stared at the fifty-dollar bill like he had never seen something like that before. "What's that for?"

"You gave me a lift. The least I can do is chip for gas." She said.

"What if I don't want it?"

"You're making a scene. Take the damn money already." She dropped the note inside the Impala's window and started to walk away. Sam stared at her for a moment.

Semi-reluctantly Dean retrieved the note. "I feel used."

"Wait." Sam said.

She turned back haughtily to the car. "What?"

"You're going after him, aren't you?" Sam said grimly. "Theodore Darcy."

"I've got questions, he's got answers." Captain Wandell said coldly, leaving no one in dispute of what she was going to do.

"How can you be this immoral after all you've been through?" It was out before Sam could stop it. Dean put his head in his hands.

"And how can you be this sanctimonious after all you've done?" She flared at once.

"You're going to kill somebody just because? Are you mad?"

"Sam, shut-the-hell-up." Dean said through gritted teeth.

"But-"

"Silence. Now."

Sam scowled and slumped back in his seat.

"You don't have any leads." Dean said.

"I'll find them." Sally replied, and her self-assured air reminded Dean of himself. He folded his arms a moment. "Look," He said finally. "You ever… need a hand with whatever… ah, hell, I'm sure you'll find us."

Captain Wandell gave him a stiff nod, and acknowledgement from an equal. Slinging the case over her shoulder, she attempted to walk off again when this time Dean stopped her.

"Hey!"

"Can't I just leave?"

"Quick question." Dean lent out the window. "Bela Talbot."

"Bela Talbot?" The woman raised an eyebrow.

"Bela Talbot." He confirmed. "How? She's dead, right?"

"You Winchesters of all people should know that just because you're dead, it doesn't mean you wont be back again." Sally said. She looked at Dean through narrowed eyes, sizing him up. "You aren't the only one who knows how to make a deal, you know."

That was news. "Bela made a deal to get out of Hell?"

"Only unlike you, she was a little more specific on what her terms would be." Captain Wandell said.

"You didn't trust her."

"Keep your friends close and your enemies closer, Dean."

After the busses had left the station, Sam and Dean sat in the Impala, not saying anything. Harry didn't even bother trying to break the silence.

Then Sam spoke. "Someone sent her back."

"I'm trying not to think who."

"I think you might."

"Huh?" Dean started the engine and rolled the window up.

"Dean, you were in Hell. Out of everyone, you're going to have more of an idea about who's capable of doing something like this."

He didn't reply and Sam didn't push him to.

It took another hour until they reached their destination. Dean stepped out of the Impala, stretched and stared up at the unevenly flashing neon sign. _Harvelle's._

"Doesn't it bother you?" He said to Sam.

"Doesn't what bother me?"

"Running back here each time we have a booboo?"

"_Hello_, Mr Ego." Sam replied, a hint of a grin on his face.

"Hey, leave Mr Ego out of this." Dean pushed open the door. "Harry, say hi to your new home."

"Stick close. We wont let anything happen to you."

Harry's eyes were wide. "_Is_ something going to happen to me?"

Neither brother could answer that.

The inside of the Bar was pretty much the same as it always was, except there was no Ellen. Or Jo. There was a new guy behind the bar that neither Winchester had ever seen before that somehow still seemed familiar to Sam. He looked over to them and his expression soured.

He knew who they were. Definately.

"Not very friendly today," Dean muttered. Harry tried to double back around the brothers and Sam put his hand firmly on the kid's shoulder.

"This is for your own good." He said sternly. "Hey." He called out to the bartender in a friendly tone. "I'm Sam Winchester. This is my brother-"

"I know who you are." The man didn't even bother to look up from serving.

"Oh."

"What's going on?" Harry whispered.

"I think they've staged a bloody coup." Dean rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "Either that or the girls are getting some mother-daughter bonding time which doesn't involve sharp objects."

"Oh, I _so_ wish." Coming in from the night, which was rapidly turning into day, Jo Harvelle faced up to her three uninvited guests. Her hair was pulled back from her face and the slogan on her shirt read _'Don't take life too seriously. Nobody makes it out alive anyway.'_

"Man, she's hot." Harry said.

"Opinions to yourself, pipsqueak." Dean replied.

"What, are you gay or something?"

"Oh, hey." Sam said, attempting to keep the relief out of his voice. "Is your mom around?"

"You missed her." Jo put her bag on the counter. "By a couple of days. Gone to sort out a problem up north."

"Did she bring a date?" Dean raised an eyebrow.

"Bobby went with." The blonde answered.

"So I guess you're top of the roost until she gets back, huh?"

"I guess so." She shrugged. "So. What up?"

This was the bit that the brothers had not been sure how to handle. "Well, it's kind of a delicate situation…" Sam started.

"We've got a bit of a problem…"

"You guys remember what happened last time you came over with a problem, yeah?" Jo asked coolly. "It's never ends good for me."

"Yeah, look, we're real sorry and all that," Dean coughed. "But can we talk in private? Private, private?"

Jo shrugged, and Sam, Dean and Harry followed her into the staffroom. She turned to face them once the door was closed. "What's this about, then?"

"Look, we… really need you guys to do something for us." Sam said, his eyes wide and as earnest as he could make them.

"Yeah, and what's that?"

Dean cleared his throat. "We – Sam and I – were wondering whether you two would mind looking out for this little guy for a while." He clapped Harry on the shoulder.

"Hey!" Harry said angrily.

Jo looked the kid up and down, eyebrows raised. Finally she spoke.

"He's a little old to belong to one of you guys, isn't he?"

"What, no, that's not it-"

"No, you got it wrong-"

"My name's Harry Turner." The kid said, cutting Dean and Sam off. "I've just come through some… weird crap and I've got nowhere to go. My dad's dead." Jo looked at him empathetically. "Sam and Dean helped me out. They said you and your mother might be able to help me."

"It's just for a while." Sam said.

"And once he turns twenty-one, you can just boot him out on his ass." Dean added.

Jo closed her eyes. For a moment everything seemed calm.

"You want to dump this kid here?"

"He's a good kid." Sam nodded

"And hardly ever swears. He'll be a, watdoyoucallit, asset."

"Jesus, you're mental to think Mom'll go for this. _Keeping_ this kid. Like some kind of pet."

"Would everybody stop taking about me like I'm not here?" Harry demanded. He was ignored.

"Calm down. This is important and I just thought-"

"I'm not your friggin' doormat, Dean!" Jo shouted. "Why don't you take him on the road with you if he's so _important_?"

"'Cause he needs somewhere stable." Sam said.

Jo crossed her arms. "Good luck getting it here." She sniffed.

"Jo, please." Sam clasped his hands together, practically begging. "You gotta help us out here. Harry's in trouble."

"Oh no. Not you too."

"Look, you're not going to believe me, but this kid is descended from the Colts." Dean pointed. "And every little spawn out there is gonna be gunning for him because they think that he's the key to the magical demon-killing weapons."

"Is he?"

"Is he what?"

"The key to the magical demon-killing weapons?" She asked seriously.

Dean thought for a moment. "I don't think so." He said finally.

"Dean?"

"I – I think it was all a ruse, all along."

"To keep the demons chasing ghosts for centuries." Sam joined.

"And to get somebody to find Theodore Darcy."

"I don't think that Theodore Darcy could be a real living person." Sam cocked his head to the side. "Not if that note had really been written by Samuel Colt. He'd be dead now if he had ever existed."

"Guys?"

"I don't know. We've seen stranger." Dean countered.

"Guys!" Jo snapped. The brothers turned to look at her, with almost identical expressions on their faces. "Don't get too excited over this Darcy dude."

"What? Why not?"

She looked up at them both. "Because he was killed yesterday."

"How d'you-?"

"Mom and Bobby had gone there, to check up on something. When they left, he was still alive, but when they came back his way…" She trailed off.

"It's probably a coincidence. A horribly icky, gruesome coincidence, but still…"

Jo didn't reply. Sam read the look on her face. "There's something else?"

"Whatever had killed him had slit his throat and wrote on the wall. So, yeah, Dean. I'm pretty sure it wasn't a coincidence."

"What did it say?"

"_Welcome to Hell on Earth_."

What else do you say after that? Jo agreed to let Harry stay the night and said she'd speak to her mom in the morning, Harry agreed immediately to anything Jo said, and Sam and Dean were given drinks on the house.

That was when Jo pulled out the letter. "It was in Dad's stuff." She said. "I think you should have it."

Dean took the letter.

_John Winchester._

Jo wandered off to show Harry his room, leaving the brothers alone looking at the last piece of correspondence Bill Harvelle had ever written to their father. Coming to a wordless agreement with Sam, Dean drew his knife and slit the envelope neatly.

Sam almost spat up his beer as he read the opening line.

_I spoke to your brother yesterday..._


End file.
